The Rocking Chair

MY ROBLEY WILSON, JR.

It is a dream absolutely
wordless, and lasts the night
like a habit of the ocean
or the moon on a varnished hull.

A man in the chair is going
nowhere, and in his lap rides
a woman, dressed in white,
hugging his bowsprit neck,

rocking, rocking, rocking
over the dream’s tidy waves.
I know I am the man in this,
can feel pleasure whisper

through my whole mind; it is
shore wind in a bare rigging,
it breathes through my body,
I have never slept deeper.

The woman’s face is pressed
deep in the reefs of my bones,
covert in her own loosed hair,
and she has no mortal weight

for she is namesake, symbol,
my figurehead forerunning love.
We float at anchor; we sway
in the lee world all night.