Under the Boughs

From beneath the boughs of my trees,

Light streams through stained glass leaves

And covers all the ground with a soft, green peace.

Am I awake or do I dream?

These leaves, these boughs, that bird,

How am I to distinguish which is which?

Colours blur, everything is one,

Edges fall into soft paint strokes, barely visible.

Time and space do not exist in this world,

Only mere echoes of those shackles remain;

An unfaithful imitation, an image in a puddle,

Rippling and distorting and drying into nothing.

Here, time is just a movement that rocks me to sleep,

And space is just the blurred edges of my consciousness.

I wonder, I dream, I am –

Suddenly, with a break as clean as the shuddering snap of a stick,

I leave that un-reality, am wrenched back into dimensions,

A world that has built itself away from the trees and their peace.

And so I wake, staggering to some destination or another,

Unable to shake that tantalising dream.