Meandering

Rivers meandering through dark forests barely
moving is their current and who knows
for how many millennia they have
flowed through this unknown
place with orchid flowers
all about the branches
of trees like lace
while their
roots
trail
down
like an old
man’s beard
a jungle fowl crows
in the dusk and little people
four foot five collect wild mushrooms
and somewhere in this dream there is a
hut whose roof of banana leaves resembles
the scales of the pangolin and inside a cradle
where our human life begins; someone is singing
me softly a lullaby and I am not yet I while they deliberate
trying to decide upon my name; frogs calling in the rain from
off the purple mountain tops where clouds have been corralled
know that sound which says it’s time to multiply and wonder why
we left Eden in exchange for chrome and glass and brass and bullets
in thy holy name; what makes us so dead certain we are right to watch
TV throughout the night not seeing the moon and stars and planets outside
and the night hawks and bats that whirl around in a timeless drama we forgot