1
she sleeps without the future of him without him she does not know without him there is no future inside the green sleep she would not sleep she would awake inside the seal of dreams of what will come and she sleeps without the dream without the green of sleep inside the mountain she knows the rise of sleep and dream of him no other than the barrenness as if nothing were more than sleep when she was young she knew more than when she was old inside the sleep of dream but then she knew less and less as if the mountain knew all along and she climbed the mountain even then when she was nine years old dreaming the mountain climbing the mountain the orange and red ascent before she saw nothingness as if delivery was a linear ascent in the future inside/outside the flashing lights in the canal on/off the lights climbing/descending the green sleep from before when he walked with a cane inside the dream she would breathe the orange and red piercing the mountain like the descent of old age but it wasn’t time to decide she would be nine years old in the future whether they liked it or not
2
that’s where the hero part comes in because like it or not she’s the hero he left before she knows him on the ascent does not know if he would leave even then her pillow caressing her cheek the skin hanging even then her eighty odd years of flesh and bone and tissue and cell her organs intact every one of them never pierced by the sharp scalpel of death she lying there without recourse to salvation to prayer manifest deliverance without approval her whole life stretching before her birth she knows the dream the green sleep will happen again and again she would be sure there is no doubt his green sleep pierces her dream and breathes the ascent the real mountain the reality she wants more than anything remembers clearly now her green sleep the red and orange as she makes the ascent
3
she remembered him now years later how could she forget remembering him sleeping inside her dream touching the flesh of her organic tissue cell body even now the continuous wishing maybe for once she would forget the ascent would have known before it happened even if she remembered she would not have known anything at all and yet she knew everything before she exited the birth canal and the callouses on his palms she felt the hardness of the world she did not yet know the grown woman she would become descending into the callouses of her dream touch he didn’t know was not aware of what he knew what he had seen in the graying fields of his home a stranger to the land he had tilled and harvested what had become of the man now a stranger with the bump on the back of his head and the callouses she once could project onto the screen in a dark film of the hardness of his heart
4
would the critics tell her to find somewhere else so cruel too polished in darkness she would stay in darkness like abstinence ticking before and after the awakening in the green sleep what was she all about in the dream she didn’t know not now the words did not make sense she was dreaming the same dream over and over the same words between the space and the words of colors like streams a long time ago the voice as if she knew this moment had come if he had disappeared the words disappearing in the dreaming disappearance of him was he the same man of callouses the man of cane she knew as if the recognition was all she knew all anyone could tell her she wanted to hold on tight this thread this theme this fear of disappearance swallowed by the orange and like twins in the night shedding their distinction not knowing one without the other she couldn’t know she didn’t know which dream their distinguished possibility she didn’t know the answer the answer wouldn’t matter even if she would she believe the visitors
5
she was wearing a blue hat and a ribbon tied like an actress she had seen in a play years ago always years in the past she remembered the blue hat a special hat she didn’t know now she didn’t know anything at all the name of him not that it mattered the blue wanting her flesh and tissue and cell and bone had grown old now the old body dreaming her in dream and sleep but she couldn’t remember when she made the ascent on his back up the mountain a brilliant sun above they would make it he said there is no other recourse they would they climb the mountain blinded by the light she would see for him was that all right while they made the ascent it would be all right he borrowed her eyes threw away the cane she on his back it was a good tradeoff the brilliance they saw the orange and red not yet the blue only the orange and red like in the descent but there was not even a hint of descent no call for it now not now not even in the future she remembered him in the nick of time without him in the nick of time she would have died in the dream she would know soon enough she had waited this long
6
she had waited this long remembering the nine-year-old on a journey how many years she wouldn’t count how many years not yet it is only part of the journey in her life whose life does it matter if she is nine or eighty-four you can object but don’t think the hardness of heart and all the hearts along the way can attest to the words of tears when she fell asleep and dreamed of him and the ascent and the green awakening sleeping all around her when they found her in the morning and the ladder, a small ladder barely perceptible, held up to the light for all to see once and for all the woman who climbed the mountain