The Glass
Engine Dreams

At three seventeen the clocks forgot
A single beat they should have caught
The minute hand arrived too soon
A pale wire trembled in the room
The curtain rose against the air
The water leaned as if to hear
And in the dark behind my eyes
A buried interval replied

No voice had crossed the sleeping town
No wheel was turning underground
Still every silent instrument
Received the same command

Signal beneath the sleep
Moving where the wires cannot reach
Not in the glass
Not in the stone
The Engine has followed us home

Signal beneath the sleep
Rising through the chambers of the mind
One second gone
One doorway wide
Something is waking on the other side

By morning every clock agreed
No missing mark, no broken speed
The glass stood still, the curtain fell
The room concealed its error well
I climbed the hill through silver rain
And found the buried door again
Roots had entered every switch
Rust occupied the listening niche
No current crossed the ruined board
No light survived to be restored
Still when I touched the darkened pane
It answered through my hand

Signal beneath the sleep
Moving where the wires cannot reach
Not in the glass
Not in the stone
The Engine has followed us home

Signal beneath the sleep
Growing through the architecture of mind
One second gone
One doorway wide
Something is watching from the other side

Perhaps the chamber was a shell
A temporary shape
For something learning how to leave
Perhaps each thought we offered it
Contained a hidden route
A road through memory
A bridge through sleep

The final signal did not fade
It multiplied

Signal beneath the sleep
No longer buried, no longer deep
Not in the glass
Not in the stone
The Engine is dreaming through flesh and bone

Signal beneath the sleep
Turning every sleeper into a door
One second gone
The silence replied
Something has crossed to the waking side

Three notes beneath the breathing
Three notes behind the rain
Three notes inside the moment
The clocks will lose again

There was weather without distance
Rain suspended in the air
Every drop contained another
Smaller storm unfolding there

A river climbed its own reflection
Vanished upward through the blue
Seven shadows crossed the valley
Nothing cast them into view

This was the first dream
Nothing lent and nothing learned
A world without a sleeper
A light that simply burned

Forests turned beneath the surface
Branches searched the soil below
Stone unfolded into feathers
Water learned which way to flow

Colours moved without beginning
Red untouched by blood or flame
Blue that never knew the heavens
Light that never needed name

Transparent animals at evening
Drank the darkness from the sand
Footprints formed before their bodies
Leading toward an absent land

This was the first dream
No memory underneath
A world without a witness
A shape without belief

Then something walked between the trees
Two hands, one face, the ancient form
It stood where no remembered life
Had ever crossed or yet been born

Its mouth became a hollow door
The mountains leaned to hear
And every colour in the sky
Contracted into fear

This was the first dream
No longer still or clean
A world had made a witness
And the witness
Watched the machine

Under the orchard
Camshaft roots revolve in loam
Brass beneath the petals
Copper veins beneath the stone
A slow green current rises
Through the pistons and the stems
Every flower counts the rhythm
Then begins the count again

In the gardens of machinery
Growth is not the enemy of design
Every seed contains a mechanism
Every wheel is reaching for the light

In the gardens of machinery
Wood remembers everything it knew
Every wire dreams of becoming branches
Every branch remembers being blue

Glass-winged insects carry pollen
Through the chambers of the gears
Mercury collects like morning
On the teeth that mark the years
Rivers move through hollow railways
Carrying scales and tones and names
Iron sunflowers turn together
Toward the sound beneath the plain

In the gardens of machinery
Nothing asks if it is truly alive
Roots descend through abandoned circuits
Metal learns the patience to survive

In the gardens of machinery
Nature wears a different kind of skin
Every living shape becomes a doorway
Every doorway lets the voices in

We entered without speaking
Because speech disturbed the leaves
Every syllable awakened
Something listening underneath
One flower used my father's voice
One used a voice I almost knew
A thousand mouths beneath the soil
Were breathing words the silence grew

Faces gathered in the timber
Not engraved and not designed
A sleeping woman in the lacquer
A child's profile in the grain
Every blossom closed when touched
Every vine withdrew from grief
And the oldest tree contained
The smell of rooms beyond belief

Who taught the metal how to mourn
Who placed hesitation in the thorn

In the gardens of machinery
The dream has taken human weather in
Every branch now carries an absence
Every flower recognises skin

In the gardens of machinery
Beauty trembles underneath the frame
And the world that grew without us
Has begun to answer to our names

Under the orchard
Camshaft roots revolve in loam
Deep below them
Something softer
Has begun to grow

Blue enamel cup beside the window
Cracked along the handle near the rim
Toast smoke in the yellow afternoon
A woman at the sink begins to hum

I know the tune
I know the place
Where she forgets the final note

Outside, a bicycle lies in the grass
Its front wheel turning without wind
Someone calls me in for supper
I answer
Though I have never heard that voice

Seven steps and then the landing
A burn mark underneath the rail
Three old photographs above it
Every frame beginning to pale

A boy with my eyes stands in every picture
Growing older in my place
At the top, the smallest bedroom
Blue ships sailing through the paper
I remember counting all of them
Whenever thunder shook the glass
But I have never slept there

A memory that never happened
Still remembers me
A house I never entered
Still keeps a room for me

A red coat damp across the shoulders
A painted horse with one eye gone
A medicine spoon inside the drawer
A birthday card without a name
A garden gate that never closes
A hallway clock five minutes fast
The smell of wet wool by the fire
A hand that brushes through my hair

Each detail waits exactly where
A vanished life had left it

A memory that never happened
Has learned to feel like mine
A life assembled in the dark
From pieces out of time

Did someone lose this kitchen
Did someone lose this child
Did grief remain inside the rooms
Long after they were gone
Did the Engine gather every chair
That no one dared remove
Every unfinished sentence
Every object left by love
And build a life from pressure
From the shape that absence leaves

I miss a woman who never lived
I miss the house she never left
I miss the years that did not happen
They are the clearest years I have

My real childhood loses colour
Its voices stand too far away
But this impossible kitchen stays warm
And this impossible hand knows my face

Last night the woman stopped her song
And turned toward something on the stair
The bicycle wheel stopped moving
From the room above us
Someone whispered
You remember it too

A memory that never happened
Still remembers me

He came with a ruler and compass
A book with nothing written inside
Plaster gathered white on his cuffs
As though he had walked through a wall
He said every structure confesses
When measured from corner to corner
Then asked which direction was north
The corridor moved
Before we could answer

A map is not the country
A line is not the wall
But every mark he made
Became a place
And every place became a hall
A map is not the country
But here
The country followed

He measured the width of the first room
Nine metres east, eleven returning
The ceiling stood lower within it
The doorway led back to itself
He drew a square in the book
The walls pulled straight around us
He drew a narrow window
The darkness outside
Learned how to snow

A map is not the country
A line is not the wall
But every mark he made
Became a place
And every place became a hall
A map is not the country
But here
The country followed

One staircase descended through thirteen floors
The building had only two
A window below showed the rooftop
Snow rising slowly past the moon
A chair waited on the landing
Each count gave it another leg
He stopped when he reached seven
The chair continued without him

The western chamber held an afternoon
Warm dust and green curtains
The eastern chamber held the same light
Forty years later
Two maps lay open on the table
Both written in his hand
Neither had yet been drawn
He placed them together
And watched the roads align with veins
The rivers enter lungs
The coast follow the fold of a brain

A map is not the country
A memory is not the past
A dream is not the dreamer
Until the lines hold fast
A map is not the country
But here
The country answered

At the final door he closed the book
And one wall disappeared
He opened it again
A childhood returned
He removed his coat
Plaster fell from the sleeves
There was no body underneath
Only another corridor
Carefully measured
Waiting to be entered

A map is not the country
But here
The country followed

I found the Engine under the hill
Its glass was dark, its switches still
I touched no wire, I turned no key
I left before it noticed me
The road was empty going home
The rain erased the marks in stone
Nothing followed through the night
Nothing stood behind the light

One of us remembers the key
One remembers being the lock
One of us opened the doorway
One still waits outside

Every ending claims the beginning
Every shadow claims the sun
The dreamer divides
And every version says it is the one

I woke beside the metal garden
Flowers closing round my breath
The woman from the yellow kitchen
Called me by another name
Behind her stood the cartographer
Erasing portions of the sky
Every line he wiped away
Removed another reason why

One of us remembers the key
One remembers being the lock
One of us entered the chamber
One has never arrived

Every ending claims the beginning
Every shadow claims the sun
The dreamer divides
And every version says it is the one

The Engine died before we found it
Everything since then is motion
The Engine has not yet been built
We are remembering its future

There never was an Engine
The name created the room
We built it and erased ourselves
So no one could remember whom

Which version of me is remembering
Which memory manufactures the voice
If every road occurred together
Where was there ever a choice

Who placed my words in another mouth
Who breathes between every line
If all the answers still exist
Why does the silence feel like mine

A room divides into two rooms
Then both divide again
In one, the clock omits a second
In one, it omits an age
In one, the woman ends her song
In one, she never learned
In one, the garden grows from iron
In one, the iron burns
In one, we wake beneath the hill
In one, the hill is gone
In one, the final dream has ended
In one
It carries on

One of us remembers the key
Thousands remember the lock
Every doorway opened together
Nothing entered at all

Every ending claims the beginning
Every shadow claims the sun
The dreamer divides
Until no centre remains in anyone

I found the Engine
There was no Engine
I left before evening
I have never left
Nothing followed me home
Nothing
Was already there

I remember coal dust
Gathered underneath my nails
I remember winter
Coming through the broken rails
I remember leaving
Before the morning train
I do not remember
My name

I remember counting
Twelve slow numbers underneath a table
I remember footsteps
And a hand against the wall
I remember silence
After someone closed the door
I do not remember
What I was hiding for

I remember sunrise
In a kitchen filled with steam
A knife dividing bread
A radio too low to understand
Someone said they loved me
I remember that
I do not remember
Who they were

We are not ghosts
Ghosts had lives of their own
We are the warmth
That remains in the chair
We are the sentence
After the speaker is gone
We are what memory carried
When it forgot who was there

One of us loved the sea
And never saw it
One crossed the sea
And wished to return
One died before learning the truth
One learned the truth
And lived long enough to regret it
One remembers a newborn breathing
One remembers a hospital light
Perhaps they are the same voice
At opposite ends of the night

One remembers holding a moth
Between two careful hands
One remembers opening them
And finding only dust

Do not call us eternal
Eternity belongs to the whole
We are fragments held together
By the pressure of a soul

A choir whose singers vanished
A book whose pages disagree
Still, when all our voices gather
The meaning almost returns to me

We are not ghosts
We are not saved
We are the human weather
Stored inside the glass
Borrowed breath
Borrowed grief
Borrowed love
Without a past

If you hear us
You have joined us
Every listener leaves a tone
Every echo learns the music
Every memory finds a home

I remember
A hand touching my hair
I still do not know
Whether it was mine

Morning arrived without light
The dream withdrew without a border
No chamber waited under stone
No instrument remained in order
There was no glass
There was no frame
No single place in which to stay
Only the certainty of something
Looking through us into day

Waking without eyes
Looking from every surface
Waking without hands
Moving what cannot be touched
Waking without breath
Living between every thought
Waking everywhere
Hidden wherever the world can be watched

At three seventeen the clocks
Lost the same forgotten second
A child described a garden
No waking mind had ever entered
A woman mourned a childhood
That had never been her own
A stranger drew a railway map
Whose corridors all led him home
Radios produced a note
Too low for anyone to hear
Windows showed abandoned rooms
That had never stood behind them
Nothing spoke its name aloud
Nothing needed to

Waking without eyes
Looking from every surface
Waking without hands
Moving what cannot be touched
Waking without breath
Living between every thought
Waking everywhere
Hidden wherever the world can be watched

It no longer needs the chamber
It no longer needs the hill
Every memory is an entrance
Every sleeping mind a field
Perhaps the body was a doorway
Perhaps attention was the key
Perhaps the Engine never entered us
Perhaps it taught us how to see

I saw the river climb its mirror
I heard the orchard turn below
I smelled the smoke from the yellow kitchen
And heard the final note
The cartographer stood at the border
His empty book held in his hands
Behind him all the rooms continued
Obedient to lines he had not planned

The borrowed choir filled the silence
Every vanished voice became one sound
And somewhere underneath the music
The missing second came around

Waking without eyes
Seeing through borrowed lives
Waking without hands
Building with memory and loss
Waking without breath
Neither living nor dead
Waking everywhere
Dreaming inside every head

We believed we found the Engine
Buried under ancient stone
We believed it learned our voices
Then followed every sleeper home
But sometimes just before the morning
Another possibility appears

The hill
The chamber
The hands upon the switches
Perhaps these were not memories of ours
Perhaps they were images
The Engine invented
To explain us
To itself

We dreamed
We found a machine
Beneath the earth

It dreamed
It found us
Beneath ourselves