A Dream of Grass Blowing East

It is only a dream of the grass blowing
East against the source of the sun
In an hour before the sun’s going down

Robert Duncan

If we had permission to return,
where would we go, when five o’clock
comes round in winter and the sun

is just a smear of shimmering pastel
exactly where the mountains
touch the sky? Would we abandon

all the rust-and-umber shadows
covering the grass for nighttime,
and the sailboats turning back

to shore? Would we exchange
our soft and fading colors
for a long-ago fiord

in foreign blues and greens?
or for white-water fountains
built for tsars

or for the orange, red, and purple
leaves of liquidambar
on the day we met?

How would we find again
the future that we are,
the path that takes us home?