The Same Dream

I have moved as far as I can
now my blood merges
into your dreaming
                            -Audre Lorde

It seems you have lost your way
in this labyrinth of halls.  Sunlight
tickles bay leaves beyond the glass
door and you think of Christmas
trees glowing with wax candles,
oranges and chocolate and nuts.
Last night you dreamed of a road
to the moon, a shining highway
sweeping upwards between dark 
clouds.  There was an old man resting
in a chair and his daughter waiting
with a washcloth to cool his brow.

I dreamed the same dream, heard
the music too, a thousand voices
in a canticle of air.  First we were
alone, and then five girls came out
to play and there were hens and goats
and a small green pond.  I carried
the smallest girl on my shoulders
and you said “this is a long walk
for a little girl with little legs”
but she shouted “I’m not a little 
girl with little legs.  I’m a big girl 
with big legs” and there was a fire 
with a red center and your sister 
falling, falling into that thrilling 
void, that bulls-eye black as smoke, 
assembled from the dust of memory 
ground fine between your aged hands.





Dreamwatch


All night his bed sailed the choppy seas
of sleep. Hungrier than usual, she watched
him dream, his sparrows hopping into golden

birds, his white hares racing in moon glow,
all his ponds and frozen streams rushing
to some ocean underneath, where whales

leap from their great skins. The morning she 
spends with jam jars and snow, a pan of water 
simmering on the stove. Cat drags a bloody 

mouse across the floor, leaving rusty smears 
that interest her, bring her pale eyes to bony 
wrists. She needs to shovel now the plow’s 

come through. Maybe she’ll get the wagon, 
pull in a load of wood. Her fingers tingle 
and burn, lusting in morning’s dead, gray light.





The Housekeeper’s Dream


She screams into the wind.  
Maybe it’s a ghost, or the ghost
of her rage, red hands raw 

from dishwater and coal. Upstairs
the men are drinking tea. She likes
hers with milk and rum, a piece

of shortbread on the side. Pumpkins
and spice, treats of the season 
spread out on a table to enjoy. 

Her tongue wiggles and squirms. 
Everywhere dust falls, but in the 
moonlight it seems to shine 

like a fairy path leading to a deep 
forest pool. She becomes a bear 
with a wet, black nose, a cruel thorn 

driven through her paw. When 
the girl comes, with her face like 
a glowing star, what strange wisdom 

will she bring? What song of mulberries 
and dawn to tear her blanket of rough 
fur and bring this shrieking pain to heel?