2 Poems by Jamie Brown

(and still)

and still, unfreckled water
glass-surfaced and
glistening refractions from the leaves
why
when
how
now
with
love
breathing softly, quietly, sleeping
like a sheep-placid patient
the kids unsure if this is
not some kind of joke the day
after weeks – it seems – of rain.

Well it can’t – the sleeper tumbles
wakes will rouse to life
those sky blues which in dreamstate
fellowships embrace
drowsily disconnected.

(Such dreams I had last night)

Such dreams I had last night. I cannot tell
what inner complex causes them to rise –
sub-conscious desires can, of course, compel --
these Escher streetscapes no longer surprise
me, nor the Breughel-like inhabitants –
grotesque monstrosities – who people them.
All are familiar old participants
in dreams where nothing old can stay. In REM-
sleep, whole lifetimes hide, born in the first scant
moments after sleep commences, and die
the moment deep sleep’s darkness falls. We can’t
move at all, no matter how hard we try.
We’ll see those players each successive night
for dreams can’t die, no matter who we are
they’ll reappear unchangéd, changed in spite
of our biology, or our desire

---

Jamie Brown’s poetry has been published in American Literary, Bay to Ocean: The Year’s Best Writing from the Eastern Shore, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and more. He is the Founder, and was the first Publisher and Editor, of The Broadkill Review, and first Director of the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize Prize competition. He has taught at George Washington University, Georgetown University, Wesley College, and University of Delaware, and taught the first Creative Writing Course to be offered at the Smithsonian Institution. He was Poetry Critic for The Washington Times. He was a member of the Poetry Committee of the Folger Shakespeare Library.