I Dreamed I Lived

I dreamed I lived,
And so I did the things that one must do—
I ate and slept and worked and went to school.
And when I woke,
I swam
Through deep cold water.
The clarity of it woke me even more.

And as the beauty teemed there all about me,
I found myself in the midst of poetry,
Swarmed by swallows and their swooping shadows,
Caught up in their mouths with the clay from a muddy sea,
Taken up high to the underside of a via dock,
Fashioned into a part of one of their homes,
And now, adopted into their lives,
I feel I truly belong.

So now I live.

-jenn long