A poem of daydreaming
by Robyn Argyle
From the floor of my cathedral, head cradled in a nest
of arms and notebook paper, I listen.
Someone is speaking from Up There, their voice
muffled by leagues of shadowy depths neither here nor there,
somewhere
above the sloped vaults in my chapel where birds and
spirits drift in and out of being.
I am dreaming, I think, but then again no. The voice
Up There is still speaking in tongues of Biology,
neurons, miracles of cellular proportions; chuckling
at some vague internal joke of its own invention.
There is a test on Friday and I really ought to be
taking notes, putting pen to page
instead of head to arm in comatose drifting, trying to
recharge from a week's sleepless nights.
I cannot find the energy to raise up from the cathedral floor
and push away the black nothing where things whisper. Fragments of
my other lives are lived here, in foreign embassies with strangers both
strange and familiar. Someone
pulls a chair across my marble floor and I start,
raising my head to see the backs of students exiting in droves.
Class is over. Did it ever begin?
I stretch and follow them outside, taking in this world with
skeptical eyes. The sun seems muted, the colors a little too
brilliant. I am unconvinced that I'm not dreaming still,
the child within me wondering if something fantastic
will occur. Am I invisible? Will the campus crack open
like an egg to reveal secret caverns beneath?
Where was I going, anyway?
The inevitable reality of reality sinks in, and I turn
to the coffee shop, my other cathedral, to make sense of the notes
I didn't take for the test I won't make for the sleep I'll be favoring
for the dreams I'll be dreaming.
