I meditated once
before Ireally knew what it was
and maybe what I did wasn't meditation,
maybe itwas remembering and the dreams that come with sleep,
but I saw things andwasn't dreaming -

I remember the oval eyes
of a German girl
pushingaway the soup her mother served her.
She was sick, she wasn't hungry,
inwords I understood but could not translate.

I was floating on thebeach
between a white sheet covering the sun
and a blue one, lightened,below.
I couldn't hear the waves or shrieks or sea gulls crying,
I wastraveling a million kilometers a second through my mind

and I saw the roomI had stayed in
with orange carpeting that wasn't ugly
and pillows and bedpushed together,
I slept with my grandmother and sister,
we slept overStuttgart
we slept over friends
we slept over graves and rubble andfire

On the beach the water and air were polar opposites
with the watermaking the hair on my legs
stand up and cry out from the cold
with the sunhot without moisture in the air
and the salt tugging the water out of ourskin

In Stuttgart it was wet and snowy in April
but the pools outsidesteamed
smelling of chlorine but the water was rising into
cool cool airlike it was headed
to some strange country, above us -

higher than theAllied planes and radiation
where we can lie still
and remember wherewe've been
and what we've done.