Twenty-One Love Poems II

II wake up in your bed.

I know I have been dreaming.

Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you’ve been at your desk for hours.

I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my roomwhere I’ve been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poemwhich is the poem of my life.

But I hesitate,
and wake.

You’ve kissed my hairto wake me.

I dreamed you were a poem,

I say, a poem I wanted to show someone…and I laugh and fall dreaming againof the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly togetherin the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carries the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.
This is poem II, from Adrienne Rich's Twenty-One Love Poems collection, written between 1974-1976. These were originally published as a complete collection but were later re-published and included as part of another collection of works, written between 1974-1977, called The Dream Of A Common Language.

Twenty-One Love Poems and The Floating Poem, (un-numbered) can all be found here at oldpoetry.