! Some Other Poet, Some Other Poetry Poem by Michael Shepherd

and yes, since we can all dream
some other life – but do not, cannot,
dream its divergences, its accidents,
its departures and arrivals,

I dream some other life
rich in metaphor
so that nothing seen, but
draws into the mind its strange partner
far across the world:
food on a plate seen as
a battlefield; a chair as atoms;
a rainstorm as a marriage;
a fieldmouse as an empire;

and across years, the whole planet
drawn two by two into the arked mind
meeting its metaphoric partner and
questioning its own image of itself
living in strangeness

and in after years
a figure seen, in knee-high leather hunting boots
striding through city streets
seeing not a city but a world;
living words as if meeting strangers,
waking simultaneously in many heavens,
knowing the unknown into its own future words