Michael Cole

Of Dreams 

We’re always, it would seem, in some stubborn state of bewilderment, scratching our heads or
holding our heads in our hands. Here, the weight of late afternoon shadows. There, the heavier
weight of darkness and the melodrama of a dream. You were lost. Or you were pursued. You fell
from a precipice. Loved ones appeared and disappeared. You were a child again with other
children. In an otherworldly landscape, you searched for something, someone. What of dreams
lost or forgotten, memory devoured by daylight.? Might as well try to clear morning haze over an
inland lake. Best let the sun do it.    

With work in Poetry East, Midwest Review, Cloudbank, Gargoyle, and Soundings East, Michael Cole has a co-translation of Finnish poet Pentti Saarikoski's long poem, “Dances of the Obscure” (Logbridge-Rhodes Pr.) and two chapbooks: After Uelsmann (Bottom Dog Pr.) - a series of ekphrastic prose poems based on Jerry Uelsmann photographs, and Manna for Winter (Owl Creek Pr.) - lineated poems. After thirty years at Kent State University, he now lives on the shore of Lake Erie with his artist wife