the yellow dust, the yellow mud, the old potato-chip van
without its windows: oh my knight of disrepair, tell me about things

falling apart: the dream (he says) a leisured country, the butler
replacing this flower vase you knocked over

with another broken vase, you put your hand
flat against the glass side of the vase, cool

and still smooth, the hairline cracks
are textureless and if you move the thing

will come apart.

The dream continues, water

everywhere, the river-water full of light as I
have seen it but how can water be so full at all, so

full, how could the river fill with light? From the bridge
we’re seeing shiny things, it’s deception

even from this angle, and from the bright romantic boats it’s only

worse: all light, or everything scraps itself
already, hubcap, life vest washed against the quay, the big leaf

all that stays from the tree on the ground
where the tree was—the tree is

wet, the still before the rain, the tree is—no—the leaf
is on the ground—the tree was wet and the leaf

is wet, is on the ground now, everything is remnant: raindrop
to the eye-lens, a rounded scatter of the colors

into color, a leaning-drunk around the corners

The dream continues somewhere else. Here (he says) think it

backwards

this is the test:

a leaf

a fall

the jump from leaf to tree