My sister’s dog barks furiously up into our old oak tree,
at the birds that taunt him from the leaves,
and he wishes that he could fly.
Miles above us, businessmen recline
in the sleek metal dragon that they have built
to do just that.
Before Earhart came Wright,
and before Wright came Da Vinci,
who each in turn placed a brick of dreams
in the foundations of a world
where men – and girls – could fly.
My sister’s dog has not yet realized
that by all accounts of nature
it takes a human’s dreaming
to defy the universe.
To be a dreaming human is – what is it?
It’s feeding a half-doused spark of an idea heaps, mounds, piles of your soul, praying for a light
until a miracle crackles into being –
until it explodes into a big old blaze that you never even imagined.
It’s to feel the same feelings as lions and whales
and mold those feelings into a masterpiece using a hammer and nails.
Only dreaming
– and haircuts –
divide me from the rest of God’s creatures, grand and small.
Tonight, my sister’s dog sleeps at my feet
while I sit at my rickety old desk
trying to put pen to paper about
the bumblebees buzzing about in my brain,
and the plans I rattle around in my head like nesting dolls.
Below me, my sister’s dog dreams
of squirrels to catch, and rabbits to chase.
When I dream of nothing but the things that the Earth stocks its shelves with today
I will become my sister’s dog.
My sister’s dog wakes up and trades his dreams
for whatever the world sets at his place on the table.
For now, I wake up,
stand from the table,
stare the world in the eyes, and –
like Da Vinci and Wright and Earhart before me –
demand my dreams.