I walk further into myself---inside a waking
dream, I walk further into dark.
All at once the trees and sky here change,
becoming ten thousand years ago,
and I’m suddenly by a cold stream in this
immensely old, and immediately
present November. If I return to my world now
I’d be, in a way, centuries old.
Either I’m falling deeper into dreaming,
or the dream is overtaking the world.
I’m in a pure green place,
and rain falls through mist, echoing
in my bones. I was born into
these tiny sounds of growing stems.
The darkness here is filled with light, and led by
the mind of light. This dark shines
in a season of paradise, the first moment
of truth in the last moment
of my lost and blind wandering.
Without knowing it I’ve always walked toward
the stars of this other world,
toward the mountains and snows
of its living fable.
Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in Wilderness House Literary Review, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999.