Secret Swan Song

*In my dream
the terrible horse began
to paw through the air
and strike out at the night -
dark as himself, shadowed
against the light
of another day.

“I’ve found him!” she screamed,
“Why are you telling the world?
You were OUR secret!”
I hear her in my dreams -
she was a silent beauty
but jaded, like a swan
who sang her secrets to me after death took her away.

In my dream
two grey figures hold each other
in a blackened human embrace
and dance against a clear background.
“Touching,” I thought, “they are
together now,” she and he
– but who were they?

My emotions struck the clock
at ten, at eleven, then one a.m.
Like stars in the night sky
they shine on and I am left breathless; spell-bound.
“You are our mirage!” she cries to me,
“Can you not see him with me”
You will surely know him only in that way!”

In my dream
my nightly ghosts frolic,
gallop, and grow wings!
They transpose into mists and clouds
free from solstice or eclipse.
And in the light of another day
my dark horse flies - away.

*In reference to Louise Bogan's poem "The Dream"

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