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Husband of NightI called you to my dream with a danceThat reached miles, so quickly, the heat Touching your cheek must have seemed a spark Jumping from your fire into the winter window scene You have made of your household. You touched your cheek Without a thought and your family saw you stroke your beard As you often do, all of you at home, in your story. We left you there, even as you traveled From my fingers up my arm to my shoulder Where my head came to lie in your lap of my dream. I told you, finally, my simple request, And you said you always knew and gathered me in your arms Stroking my hair and kissing the wounded part of my brain. But when I fell asleep there was nothing Until dawn when the river ducks blared And flew under the bridge. Then I dreamed again Of a man ravaging a woman until she was a liqueur In a brightly-lit beaker and of a violent horse Barring my path and a climb up a frozen balustrade to a bridge of cement Where two acquaintances chatted above me, Now and then nonchalantly offering a hand, And nowhere were you to be seen. |
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Issue #8, April, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.