What is it but a Dream?

'O Rabbit!' cried Alice, stretching palsied hands
toward the looking glass. 'Where have you been?
I long for curiosities and adventures.'
Cold seeped into her marrow, the London chill sweeping
what remained of life from her varicosed limbs. Still,
though, she smiled, feeling the glass beneath her fingers
warp, the smell of tobacco and loam drifting toward her.

'Late, late, late!' The rabbit cried, pocket watch
tic-toc-ticking away as it stared ominously
into the face of days and nights and years.
'I always seem to be running late where you're concerned,
Miss Alice.' And he reached out, through the glass,
Grasping her palsied hand in his down-soft paw.

Alice stared ahead, eyes cataract blind and
half-lidded from dreaming, seeing nothing but
what memories supplied. And yet she knew
that the Red Queen, running as swift as if the years
had not passed, would be playing chess with the White.
There the Tweedles dressed for battle, and there the Red King
whose waking sent her back to humdrum tedium.

'So it wasn't a dream,' Alice exclaimed, feeling the years
tumbling away. 'For you are awake and yet I am still here.'
'Not so,' said the King, shaking his head. 'For what is life
but a series of dreamings, as if staring through the glass?'
He pointed, then, and Alice turned about, to where a tea
party still waited. 'Take your seat, Queen Alice, and
celebrate the dreams of your life. You shan't go back
this time.'

Through the looking glass, a girl runs with talking mice
and Mad Hatters, learning at the foot of a caterpillar.
Another dream, as the body of an old woman in London
Town lies sleeping. A permanent dream this,
as the chill of London sweeps the rest of her warmth
from her stiffening dead limbs.

WORD COUNT: 300

Poem based on:

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream--
Lingering in the golden gleam--
Life, what is it but a dream?

Last two stanzas from Through the Looking Glass.