Dreamer

I was sixteen the first time it occurred
to me that things stand open. What I mean
is, ever since I saw that flower gird
itself in purple petals, I have been
convinced that each and every thing I sense
blooms inward. There I was alone beside
the lake but I was also falling in
the petals kind of like when true love rents
you from the world and tips you downward, tied
to those deep eyes in whom you turn and spin.

I didn’t think much of it then; in fact
I thought so little of it that to say
it never crossed my mind. Besides, abstract
ideas always seem to lead astray
our explanations. Still, today, it’s said
I’m like a dreamer, standing by and blank —
I’m always in my head, that’s how my brothers
have learned to view me. So, once up from bed
I like to go against the riverbank
and watch how each wave turns with all the others.

Then sometimes when the winds are blowing strong
a gull will come by riding on the gales,
thrown side to side but coursing hard along
the torquing gusts. He trusts his widened sails
to meet with chance and craft in it direction,
a dance the sky has asked him to. I love
those stymied mornings when I’m lost and flying
and time is gone. It comes as resurrection
when like the oak leaves tossed from high above
I land again and hear a far bird crying.

Basketball

We thought at first now here’s a kid gone crazy.
He’d come out to this hoop and shoot the ball
all day. We said he must be stupid, lazy
or spooked by life so much he had to stall
his youth in games. His whole mind in a loop,
an arc that carried from his hand a shot,
he’d spot up square or on a move regroup
so as to tarry with the tarmac lot.
But soon we’d come to watch. He had become
a citizen to that old court. He played
the sport as though he had gone blind or dumb
and something else were moving him. He’d made
of his own strange instinct a worldly bliss
where rules don’t change and new attempts don’t miss.

Sahand Farivar is a Canadian poet who lives on the north shore of Lake Superior. His work is forthcoming with Blue Unicorn and Cactus Press Poetry.