Dream Series: Desert Gods

Full moon light: shadows casting a thick green hue…succulents and grass the blue burn of flame…pale petals and stone a spectral glow.

My mind alternated: a restless city half-sleep and distant desert visions: bat wing rhythms and night blooming cereus.

A song of insect and flora storming my senses: the lightning branches voicing a distant convergence: an ethereal billowing about my body and jointed arachnid legs edging past my feet.

Stepped monolithic gods poured of blood: evoke a wild serenity: my son whispering at the back of my ear: They hold all the secrets. Will they respond? If my canvases call or your film?

…so I walk towards, closing the distance until I can place my palms to the preserved flesh…shutting my eyes and letting down all guard…feeling a pull…a pulse…a warmth…a glow…

…my silences, loud as they’ve been…have still more to learn from the immortals and beasts of arid land…

…the maps remain…long after I’ve shaken sleep from my bones…

E.A. O'Connell

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At least once a day I look out on the sycamore…stoic giant existing in shapes of seasonal cusps…and I meditate on the hues of bark and foliage, the angles and lines of sunlight and shadows, the cut rope that still sways in absence of its swing. It’s an unloved tree; unowned, misunderstood, neglected: an island…fear gets the better of some, calling upon its death. I calculate distance and height, I hypothesize directional destruction, and I address probabilities: age and health. I hear no alarms sounding. My mind always circles back…to the majestic stature that flexes with every gust…tornado bearing down, sky of night backdrop to pallid complexion, me with infant in arms and a womb full, glimpsing the give, imploring of its god, as cracking maple joints took my hearing…slate, shutters, glass, roofs…betraying…but never the sycamore…imposing and gentle, true to roots…nor’easters that thrash and splinter the branches, the frozen weight of ice and snow…the latest taking with it each nest that dappled the limbs…but still it reaches, widens, heightens…most mornings I get lost in labyrinthine thoughts, eyes towards the sycamore, coffee in hand, but I almost always give to dreams…the branch from which I’d swing…the crook I’d nestle within, book after book read from my perch…the limb of greatest height, my toes would grip, closing the distance between the moon and my fingertips…

E.A. O'Connell