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PoetryMagazine.com
BACK Since 1996 Volume XXI Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
Dream of a City
If you are a dream disguised as a city I’ve dreamt you so often Dreamt water trance reflecting the black prow slipping through
Dreamt that old dance with a single oar over the glittering scales
of the always writhing
Dreamt lion devoured me for love of narrow passages ended by stone walls sudden canals someone’s footsteps behind me
Dreamt water’s lilting loveliness becoming land becoming water Dreamt night terrors in the lion’s mouth eyes
in the back of their heads punishing hand out of nowhere Black wells of the Inquisition
Some say you’re a swamp dressed up as a fancy lady all feather boas and gilded mirrors
Some say you’re a fabrication a city of stones stolen from other people’s cities
a flood pretending you are paradise tied to a forest of long beams that pierce
the sea bottom the always writhing serpent below you floating you moonchild you changeling playing
the tides I think you are a masked ball dancing to songs our parents sang before they’d even dreamt us
We laugh to see them young couples dressed for the glittering night gliding under old bridges through the full circle
made by stone and its reflection into this aging pair we have become riding a water bus named “prima materia”
If you’re an enchantment masquerading as a holiday complete with fish market and sparkling wine
I could be Aschenbach or Tadzio remembering my life as a woman in somebody else’s dream
There is a garden a fruit tree a snake with the head of a woman
I could be Faust surveying all the lands I’ve stolen from the sea yet lusting for that last holy sanctuary
with church bells the old couple visited by gods the black prow slipping through
our water trance over the always writhing sea serpent
©
Copyright,
Naomi Ruth Lowinsky. |