Poetry

The Dream of Reason by Morri Creech
(from The Sewanee Review)

For several minutes the whole drunken room
Whirls in my half-sleep, and a daze of motes
Flares in spindrift galaxies, staggers and floats
Like Descartes' dream, before the ergo sum
Of consciousness calms the mind's delirium,
Taking note of the room's coordinates-
Floor and four walls where light accumulates;
The shade of blinds a slight wind moves at random.

What to make of this lingering trick of sense?
Descartes got up and, shaken from his ease
By a dance of sparks, a stranger, and a verse,
Constructed from his thought firm evidence.
And me? Motes spin their bedlam universe
In my mind for days. I tire of certainties.