One A.M. [excerpt]

    by David Young

Repetition's magic. I knew it in my bones.
Let me repeat my dream for you,
let me repeat it for myself.

Let me talk on in this starlight,
these meteor streakings of nonsense,
this chaos, these fractals and freckles.

Don't take my words away from me yet.
I'm doing my midnight weeding,
grasping the thistles close to the root,

I'm losing the dream farm, I'm
probably failing, repeating
what others have said--

but that farm, like an old brown photograph
suddenly filling the senses--
and this night, like a silver gelatin print--

and a string that runs from me to the past:
the view from the farmhouse window
across the silent fields of snow.

from: Night Thoughts and Henry Vaughan. Copyright © 1994.