He dreamed a hydrangea big enough
to block out the face of a star,
sleep-sweated the featureless sea.
Mornings, he painted its naked form
a thousand times in tidy landscapes
with businesslike rain dropping evenly from the sky.
Last night in dreams he abandoned
his hat and pipe, neither a hat or pipe,
in favor of containing an island in a bottle
carried in a doe’s wet brown eye,
as she fled through a miniature wood,
sky cut out in the shape of her form,
pasted in that moment,
sameness of clouds drifting
through her through him.