In my dream, 
broken like the Buddhist statues of Bami-yan, 
I am flying over a still lake 
that stretches for miles. 

It's dark: a night lit only by a waning moon. 
The orange sky of the Northeastern United States 
is a fiction. 
The Milky Way'd sky last seen in New York in 1883 is real. 

I make the sound of rushing water, 
like the four-faced chariot of God. 
But it is quiet like electrum. 

You soar nearby. 

I soar in an arc around a tree 
that is not harmed by acid, 
and loop like a stunt plane that never crashed,
with the sense of speed one gains
when the destination seems within reach;
when the treadmill is forgotten,
and the motives are pure.

Its geography are the hills around a summer camp,
far from chlorinated pools
and thick, St. Augustine sod.
Where nurture is more than nature,
where Americans are not growing morbidly obese.

In ordinary places,
if our cave is safe and warm
and if our bellies are full,  
and our children are abundant:
We are happy. 
But in my dream, 
smashed like the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, 
I am speeding and soaring
and diving to the surface of the lake
where I can feel the mist evaporating 
from its surface.