Dreaming Deer Valentine (for David)

Under the swoon of the fan
in the warm coil of dreams
your slender flesh and bones
recall the sleeping deer
I stumbled on in the fields
a hundred years ago
asleep we are all children again
scrunching down into the drifting
or flinging ourselves up into the air
while the safety pin of a body

keeps us anchored to the earth

and yet life here is unimaginable

without this nightly ritual of dreams
where we get to see what happens
when we leave space and time behind