potpourri

Deep in an autumn night
the wind comes, blows
the last dreams from the trees.
Deep drifts of them
the like of which
I have not dreamed before
pile up against the fences,
walls and doors.

Some are from my sleep,
are from our trees,
but most are from the neighbors' gardens.

It is not always easy to see which.

In one, relaxed, reclining at his ease,
and on a hammock:
God, beneath two cherry trees
from which the fruit is falling fast,
which now I see him catch
and bless and throw into the air.
The former cherries
fly away as birds.

But then. In quite another dream
the cherry dream
is stood against a wall and shot
for blasphemy -
or is it heresy?
It's one of those...
The firing squad are hungry wolves.
Hungry for what, I ask myself.
They look well fed.

And so the dreams pile up
and rustle round each other,
flap against the windows
and the doors, demand
admittance through the day.

A rugby ball I kick along a beach
becomes two balls with every kick.
One morphs into a brain.
When I look back the beach
is strewn with human brains.
How can mankind
make use of so much power?

There is a church.
Black, silhouette
and ringed with bats.
I find it locked against me.
Black birds are flying down
from its high tower.
They're forming rings around me.
I think they will attack
with sharpened beaks,
but then they turn
and pull the church apart,
black stone by stone.
Inside the church, a cage
in which the clergy
have been locked.
All the priests
from all the ages
past and present
are trapped in there.
Of God there is no sign.

Another dream is stuck to this.
A monkey puts a match
to the steel cage
and burns it down.
God walks out from
the smouldering remains.
I do not see
what happens to the priests.