Stories and Rules, Blood and Bones

Stories and rules, blood and bones,
Dreams of images unending
And relays of neurons, these pairs
Blending together, ascending and descending,

Sometimes one is the mother and the other
Is the son, and sometimes the other way
Around. (Oh how my dreams emerge
In the night from the roar of the ocean spray.)

The source of the tremendous river
Is the source of the banks, the oxbow lakes,
The waters give the land new rules,
The forest along the bank slakes

Its deepest need from the deepest
Waters, from the first bubble
From which the river courses, until
All the land, from wheat to rubble,

Align themselves, under the sun
And under the stars, until the land
Is so rich that the dreamer on
Its soil sees visions from Samarkand

To heaven. And sometimes the land itself,
Rises, the hills and their sediments,
So that they themselves are the river,
The dreams themselves and their wonderments.