Watching A Woman Sleep

You went to sleep
inside my sleep,
and I had yet to let mine go.

I guarded it
with a shield, I moved over it
as a hawk moves over earth with his eyes and head.

Your face was the land, your
body was the black arc pressed
two-handed

into the sky. It joined the
paper puppets, shadow, in their
silent pews

as they worshiped the slow moving
head of their master,
their master is our master,

our master weighs close to nothing.
He is inside of the walls.
He is coming like laughter out of the dark,

our mouths are one
landscape.
I frame them with bone

marrow fragments,
the sweet charcoal. It is the
most ancient medium, primordial
as squid ink, pure as wine,

it lands in pools in our mouth,
sequence of numerals and letters
that is shaped like our sleep.

I have enciphered it.
Don’t worry. And I have enciphered it
with numerous codes.