(in memoriam Patricia Beer, 1919-1999)
She had half unpicked the dream
before she saw that it was not her own.
By what strange pillow-talk physics
had these scissor-stepping horses
pranced their awful dignity
behind her eyes, the waking minute
glittering with firecracker hooves
on Adriatic cobblestones?
Salt and dread tipped her morning
tongue, the ribbon of sweat
cooling her nape was nothing
she might disown. Like a child
before her father’s opened desk
she listened till the empty house
acknowledged her guilty antennae
and her frozen mid-air fingers
quickened and plunged.
She told herself no secret could harm her,
no truth could wound or do other
than replenish her hoard of love and caution.
A horsetail bannering the blood-red sky;
a love letter to a stranger;
a sparrow’s gelatin flightless wings;
an inch of exotic currency,
clipped and folded in one of Daddy’s
several passports. She sucked and
gobbled and filled her pockets and then,
quite full, drew back the curtains
on the yellow kitchen and took a sip
of tea whereby the stolen dream
withdrew, dissolved, and vanished.