Variation on a Poem by Cortney Davis
                                                                                     for Cortney

I selected the words from the dreams left uncovered overnight in my mind.

I felt the words on the tip of my tongue. They were small, like tiny eggs, but not like eggs. Some were soft with the sounds from Latin, not quite forgotten—like old men and women.

For a moment before releasing them, I wondered if the words knew about transformation. In my dreams, they had been safe.

I scattered the words over the page. They fell onto the paper that was as white as milk, nurturing the words like breast milk, and the words became small verses.

Outside, the sky was blue, and sugar turned red in maple leaves that soon would be brown and as removed from life as a poem is from its instance of creation.

I rolled the sweet words from my fingertips to the page, and, one at a time, one at a time,

they disappeared

as I thought of your poem.