

Memory to Dream
Stephen Mead
Here is the remembered vision glimpsed:
Asleep - really - was I?
Having lived that landscape, the pasture's exquisite emerald
& of Devon dampness, the horizon's aura of pear-like ochre...
An Easter, slightly muddied, was the emotion,
with one chalk-white band of some road going through.
You were bareback, shirtless colt-black in that span
time swept into slumber's recurrence.
I wake from sudden shouts, rumbling dust of hooves
at a gallop, & one clear shot ringing on.
Were you cavalry? Were you outlaw?
In my nose there is sulfur & smoke in my throat,
but gun powder fades first red, then pink,
courage the badge bleeding in this watercolor
sutured by my hair to your chest,
conscious now, a later age,
where even in advancing daylight,
the wound itself no longer bleeds.