Not of Byzantium

Awakening at one AM after dreaming
not of Byzantium,
not of Babylon, but better --
not Shangri-La, but shaded limb --
the pine I climbed when I was nine.

No Acropolis, only
fallow farm and rising sun.
Across, a distant treeline
ascends to render Athens'
Parthenon prosaic.

Exceeding empires, exceeding
even Elysium, is
this slumber's ordinary boyhood field.