What syllable are you seeking, Vocalissimus, in the distances of sleep? Speak it. --Wallace Stevens

1.

Asleep again, I did not hear the telephone. You were, instead, that girl in the painting who reaches down from her bed to touch the sea.

Which sea, I don't know.

2.

The train. Shaking my head in the turns.

As if I disagreed with what I was dreaming. But I was dreaming I was asleep.

3.

When I wake it's midday and I can still hear you breathing. The telephone beside the bed. Were you dreaming of oranges?

I stayed awake describing them. The cold cratered skin, the peels.

4.

When you go walking inside your sleep, The city will be dim. Your cameras Swaying from your arms. Above, a single star Will be blinking. A cursor, spinning

What seems like slowly over the rooftops. The man inside the star Is taking a picture of the world. Everyone But me, he will say, to the microphones That line his helmet. And below him,

In a Low Earth Orbit, the rocket stages Drift by like clouds. In your dream, the sky is still the sky. Or, it is the sea, having fallen apart to get there.