don't dream
of your kingdoms, your shires
your out-and-out dictatorships
lying trapped in wait beneath the crystal
your life sweeping the second hand
across them
Don't dream of the days when the backyard
was a jasmine paradise and the easement
was a dusty desert road, the creek
a river and you a heron hunting.
Time to put the things of childhood away,
grow up, forget the toyshelf. Build a wall,
brick by complaining brick, across the places
you no longer need, the gardens dusty with drought
and the hedge maze crackling brown and dry.
Ignore the fire sweeping the plains.
Ignore the castles crumbled into silence.
There are children lying suspended in crystalline dream
at the center of your mysteries, shut away,
floating embraced forever. Leave them
to their hollow silent hallways,
walking down, step after step, forever.
The things of childhood disappear beneath your surface
and you leave yourself notes, stories, anything to remind
you of what you are leaving behind. But each
image fights memorization, each voice fades into stillness,
each blank space becomes a blind spot, the eye
sliding over it in incomprehension.
Don't dream of your kingdoms.
They do not remember you, either.