When today began there was in my dream
the world of a child whose friends all had abandoned,
whose neighborhood had estranged,
whose compass needle pointed in all but one direction.
And it was on me somehow to be his godfather
his trip-master older
self peering from my distance into his small actions
and missteps to correct, edify whatever fault or infraction,
breech or offense even before it occurs.
I stand watch in the dream. Watching the boy
befriend others with strange flat drums
at the end of long handles, beating with a single stick
each the song of their bright, street-clad day,
their clatter finding home in my ears (my sleeping ear
drums), banging and thrumming; and the boy
dons his own and now I too am joining in the noise,
tips of my fingers rapping some long strip
of lightly corrugated metal, off-rhythm and imbalanced
at first but then slipping into a pattern, into steady patter,
into a long hushing rasp of sound,
and we see each other in our blended meter
and he, the boy, grins up to me
that I have found my cadence, and the buzzing roll
of our drums there on the alleyway stoop in the back
of my mind lifting me
in a slow march to wakefulness.
