Dream of Koa Returning

dreamed 2009 or before, by W.S. Merwin

Sitting on the steps of that cabin that I had always known with its porch and gray-painted floorboards I looked out to the river flowing beyond the big trees and all at once you were just behind me lying watching me as you did years ago and not stirring at all when I reached back slowly hoping to touch your long amber fur and there we stayed without moving listening to the river and I wondered whether it might be a dream whether you might be a dream whether we both were a dream in which neither of us moved