of disappearing when we wake. Evaporating
in the light and heat thrust into open eyes.
Stephen King says they decompose. Some say
they fly away to vanish from our memory

only to recompose themselves when some key
turns the lock to that closed room. A story 
on the radio about fruit trees, and we say,
I dreamed about an apple orchard last night,

just like Aunt Rosa’s trees in Maryland.
There were bees and my brothers there, before
Vietnam, before…  before…. Images
and fragments linked by words in a long chain

drawn up from the well of sleep and memory
and confabulation, an ordering of the story
jumbled by the brain’s blender. Smoothed
in the telling, a narrative to make new sense,

a bright insight of understanding that burns.
Dreams have a way of showing us the truth
of what we are without the lies we tell
ourselves and others, who lie politely in return.