"The Monkey's Dream"

The Monkey's Dream

Before warmth, in snow,
before people or time,
in a world of silence,
he sits in steaming
springs, warming himself.
And the warmth is good,
making his eyelids
flutter and slide,
melting while something
bigger waits:
a blast of night,
bursting, falling,
the heavens reeling
overhead in
desperate detail,
planets and stars
he doesn’t know.
Far away, an explosion,
a distant booming
signals some remote
cataclysm, the
beginning of
something and
the end of
something else.
Innocent,
he dreams of a
ladder, of
language, and
buildings
while his fur is
stiff with frost.
All it took was
a little push, a
thought, a moment.
He dissolves into a
skull, the monuments
after time, after
people and the
heavens spin faster,
waking him from
his warmth, not
knowing what
he’s done.

©JEF 1995