Sleeping Trees

Between what should and what should not be

Everything is liable to explode. Many times

I was told who has no land has no sea. My father

Learned to fly in a dream. This is the story

Of a sycamore tree he used to climb

When he was young to watch the rain.

Sometimes it rained so hard it hurt. Like being

Beaten with sticks. Then the mud would run red.

My brother believed bad dreams could kill

A man in his sleep, he insisted

We wake my father from his muffled screams

On the night of the day he took us to see his village.

No longer his village he found his tree amputated.

Between one falling and the next

There’s a weightless state. There was a woman

Who loved me. Asked me how to say tree

In Arabic. I didn’t tell her. She was sad. I didn’t understand.

When she left. I saw a man in my sleep three times. A man I knew

Could turn anyone into one-half reptile.

I was immune. I thought I was. I was terrified of being

The only one left. When we woke my father

He was running away from soldiers. Now

He doesn’t remember that night. He laughs

About another sleep, he raised his arms to strike a king

And tried not to stop. He flew

But mother woke him and held him for an hour,

Or half an hour, or as long as it takes a migration inward.

Maybe if I had just said it.

Shejerah, she would’ve remembered me longer. Maybe

I don’t know much about dreams

But my mother taught me the law of omen. The dead

Know about the dying and sometimes

Catch them in sleep like the sycamore tree

My father used to climb

When he was young to watch the rain stream,

And he would gently swing.

Source: The Earth in the Attic (Yale University Press, 2008)