18 August 2024

By Philip Kuepper

Mystic floats
suspended
between a still ocean
and a still sky.
The otherworldly July evening
wraps its cloak of air
around the town.
The river lies liquid love.
Not an oar ripples the surface.
Sound?
A lone sparrow chip, chip, chips
in the oak outside my window.
Then silence.
Has it flown into its dream
world of sleep? Perhaps in the sparrow’s
dream a river
lies rippled by oars,
where rowers need never
cease to row,
and the chip, chip, chip acts
as the rhythmic call of a cox.
Fantastical perhaps.
Yet, still, perhaps,
dream river running with brainwaves
that think rowers into rowing them,
brainwaves, oars’ blades,
in communication,
suspended,
between sleep
and waking.
Where lies the border where
reality and dream overlap?

(7 July 2024)