The best thing a dream can do for you
is not prophecy nor
free entertainment from your inner lunatic,

not even the message
your mind is holed below the waterline
and will sink fast unless
you can find that length of rope
you somehow let slip overboard last year

(though it’s good to know the secret sharer of your life
remains on watch throughout the night,
a calm and I think magnificently bearded second-mate
— your first mate, beardless, sleeps beside you —
who will always truthfully report
the gravity of the buoyancy situation).

No, the best thing a dream
can do is remind you
it’s not true

and the distressed lady
carrying her mutilated liver in a handbag
will not die,
not because you’ve saved her or failed her
as you rummaged frantically through her entrails,
but because she does not exist.

It’s worth being reminded your mind
does this kind of thing most often
when you’re wide awake,
especially the distressed ladies,

and to truly wake up is to know the reason
you cannot grasp that rope underwater
is there is no rope, no water,
only grasping —

Oh to surface beside an entire lover
and feel your fingers slowly unhook
one by painful one!