Past Bedtime

Sometimes I feel like a stream, she said.
I can't explain it. Sometimes I braid
her slippery hair, the faint strands and dark
and all the honey in between, run
my thumb over the rope of it, then let go.
It takes no impression from my winding
and worrying. Sometimes I think
this isn't the real world at all, she sighs,
as piles of chapter books slide to the floor,
splayed open or the language crushed in.
Clay people squat on the windowsill
with their stacks of dirty dishes, over-
shadowed by a ceiling-scraping tower
of CD cases. When the little goddess
closes her eyes, they can hunter-
gather for barrettes in the staple-spiked
forest of the rug. Sometimes I think
I couldn't have made her, that something
older than I am rushes through her woods,
glinting now and then, knocking new shine
into old rocks, whispering in the gloom.

Copyright © 2009 Lesley Wheeler All rights reserved
from Heathen
C&R Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission