Predictably–this is a dream, after all–the setting was a zendo,
a structure of golden wood, pitched beams, high windows open
to sky, breezes and other inspirations, and not just any zendo–

if you know what I mean–the Ring of Bone Zendo,
which, of course, is located on Gary’s land surrounded
by pines and firs and green sunlight and named after Lew’s poem

because–you know. That one time I spent the night
at Snyder’s place, a little brown bat, which is likely the exact name
of this tiny common creature, wove the shadows overhead

when the poet opened the door to sacred space, pointing to the floor
as a good place to unroll my sleeping bag in the dark. And I did.

I mean who am I to argue with a famous poet? With my Eveready
in one palm and everything else I grasp in the other, I kicked

the roll, and the shapeless fabric unspooled like thoughts in sleep.
As the bat peeped and flounced in the darkness I made by killing
the light, I lay me down to sleep. So there I am, asleep in a zendo

with a bat aflit in the rafters–ironic, right? But that is not the night
I dreamed; this dream was last night, decades, a score of years later,

on an island far from California. So today, before the dawn
most recent, I reposed again in that zendo, which in my nocturnal

imagination had broadened and deepened to an infinite space
of long tables and benches and many of my fellow humans eating

and drinking together as we do in shelters and mead halls
and centers of community everywhere. And, yes, as I expect
in my dreams about the man, Snyder was there, but I was surprised,

not about his presence in the hall or my dream, but that as we stood
beside the gleaming wall near the board of victuals, to me, the poet

whispered–not a volume expected of we who speak for a living–
that I should now start giving more bread to the hungry

by carrying loaves to the tables and splitting the fresh and new
with my hands and handing that essential steaming fare

to everyone without. I was not to worry, he advised, waving
at the basket of bread, since no matter how often

I went back to gather more, always more loaves would be stacked
when I returned, and I did go back, and again, many times,
always denying the impulse to count the new loaves or to glance

into the rafters at the bat still navigating drafty shadows
beneath the ceiling beneath the sky. Snyder returned–I assume–

to the kitchen where the real work of baking and stirring
and boiling and cutting occurs, and I–as directed by the poet–
paced the narrow aisles between the scraping of plates, clinking

of utensils, and thunking of cups while I awkwardly allotted
what’s needed to all in need, knowing, as you do, we all discover
that is the duty fallen to us. And I never looked up once

from the task, mindful, I suppose, that since life is ever seeking,
the little brown bat, too, found one way or another into the night
or the light.