Common-Law Kundalini

the human spirit in full cloud-drift,

a lust fieldstripped to eye and ambition

which moves through walls and doors

and rises to the carnival of looking down

with no power but that of seeing

all of it momentarily unchangeable:

the shadow-tinseled moonlit fields

and silvery water towers on stilts,

the vole in the unblinking talon of the owl.

Even better, asleep, in dream-buoyancy,

I have seen more than I ever saw

pretzel-munching in some cloud valley

thirty thousand feet above the sorghum.

Once a pelican stopped to question me.

Once my friend Herbert McAbee

bumped into me out of the mist

with a talking sheep under his arm.

Often I have achieved much in basketball,

for many dream flights launched

from the magic floor of some actual gym

where old men smoked by a potbellied stove,

but removed from time, unblocked,

and watched by sweethearts, cheered,

I rose and dunked and hovered

with fear's iodine in my throat.

When I am up there, it is not poetry.

In the dream's onliness, it feels

wingless, bird-elegant, experimental,

requiring the decisionless decision-

making of dreams. But somehow,

why do I do this if not for the freedom?

Sometimes I wish I had never heard

of the name of Sigmund Freud.