The Dream
       

It didn't care what happened, came
and went. The past it took me back to
dressed differently, had fresher faces.
A hill rose steeply between two houses
that, except for one, no one lived in.
The street was paved with unmowed grass.
How can a thing be so exact
and patched together out of scrap,
pieces of wind, and bric-a-brac?
A few of which, it's true, had clung
to one another once, but not
much better than the flung water
dream resembles, if not is.
I found her in the house alone,
and when I tried to talk as though
the past might be forgotten, she
touched something, smiled, and turned away.
As did the dream, which came too close
to how things had been to survive.

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Copyright © 2012 Roger Mitchell All rights reserved
from Beloit Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission