I.

Naked. In front of the whole class.

 

Nothing but a garden-grown tomato to hide me.

 

The professor of philosophy standing next to me

keeps receding.

 

Pulling away and away, until the laughter-

Filled room becomes a busy street.

 

And I, still naked,

have lost track of him.

 

A physicist tells me in passing

that my garden is pulling

apart at the seams:

 

“There seems to me

    to be a lot of holes

        between all the molecules

 

In the juicy fleshes

        of all those cantaloupes

            and grapes

        and sugar beets

 

That can’t be surmounted

            by words

                Thrown into song.”

 

He offers up a melon,

and the ease with which he tears it in half

        lets me know I’m dreaming.

 

You’re not real, I try to say,

 

        but he raises a hand to tell me:

It’s not that kind of dream.

 

His white hair waves in a wind that isn’t there,

                        and he smiles,

 

turns to walk away.

 

He shuffles off softly,

            the world around me swelling with the

Sound,

 

And my still-naked body disintegrates

                from the force of habit

            of taking off my clothes.

 

II.

 

His lucid dreams aren’t always what

he thinks. The garden’s not his, it’s

his neighbor’s, and his neighbor’s

 

No physicist, so why would the

world tear apart at

the seams? Why would he

 

Ask that question? he asks

himself; the figure

of authority is all he

 

Remembers. They say

to imagine yourself

spinning to hold on.

 

to your dreams. But

his surface is smooth,

and his spin’s

 

Only observable

in relation to

another’s.

 

Awake now, he watches her,

his eyes dancing below his lids,

 

dancing because they are covered,

and he struggles to determine

 

who is leading: he,

she, or that massive shadow,

 

in the corner of the room,

 

that keeps trying to speak?