Poet’s Dream

I dreamed that we ran
out of metaphors —

that everything could 
only be itself, smooth skin

wholly unlike the bark
of a birch, wide smile

only radiant in sunglow.
Out of the literal ocean

someone I didn’t know
rose up in glory and said

to me that hunger is all
that’s left when the likeness

of things is stripped away.
She told me stories

about a blue-green maze
that simply is the world,

the wondrous real shape
of it free from imposition.

She said this is the path
desire runs through, visible

and invisible, every breath
an expression of yearning

for something more lovely
in the next.