ADRIENNE EBERHARD

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Books for Dreaming

Heavy and crisp of page,
they lie in my lap
like monuments.
They assault my heart,
turn my limbs to liquid:
my eyes collide with cliff, volcano,
I am caught in the limbs of trees,
stumble on tiny lichens,
drown in the dark eyes of bears,
I run after the black flap of raven in the woods,
watch the swift, ghost-step of grey wolves passing,
or else, the brown sweep of rivers drains on the page,
washing my body to dirt, to soil,
my hair floating like the span of a delta,
or luminous marble rises
in the shape of temple, statue, pavilion,
containing me, shaping me
in cold, fluid forms.
Streaming across page after page
and into my fingers
is the lure of these things.
Sometimes, there’s the scent of a 4000 year old tree
shifting in the paper,
or the hard, fading bark under my palm,
or small sand grains riffling in the corners of the book,
scratching at my skin and eyes.
Here, in my own house on the side of this mountain,
where violets creep
and frogs call brokenly,
I turn the pages of these books
and my body deserts me,
changes from solid to liquid, becomes porous; ether.
I escape like clouds,
gathering, dispersing,
in an endless chase after the world.