Finding the Boy

by Stephen Petroff

                       At Night, I am
Awakened from dreaming to look through the window —
As water is welling, the moon’s eyes are filling
And at its throat — at its breast — on its belly
There moves a red hand that looks like a star.
The moon, with its shadows, and seas,
Has black nipples
And the star is a planet, a red world
[attached /to the moon     by a voice or a signal.]

Find a boy who can draw, who can put this on paper:
The moon has a white breast, a white face, a woman’s long throat
That is the color of snow.
Stars and ice crystals are one and the same, but Red Planet looks like
The red slap of a hand.
Where have the stories of these pictures been written?
Where have these descriptions been pictured?
Who can read? Who can know?
Who finds the signs? Who will draw the book?

Tonight, as I wake in shock,
Tonight, when I see, in the dreaming,
                        A red world,
                        Too near to our moon,
I look for a boy to make pictures
Of these chapter–dreams we’ve been having.
This boy may be an old woman     a broken man     or a small girl,
                        A deer or a stone,
If only the new boy knows all the new stories,
            All the old dances for all the new dreams.
Moon and Red World will not be in Taurus tomorrow.
I can’t see how such a new one as we need
Will ever be produced or located. I may have to go myself,
To find where he went.

Yearning and yearning, and because I am yearning,
I will find someone with a heart like the heart of the boy
                                   We have lost.