When I look out from inside
the dream and the space of the dream
shines between us, I see you there, shining
on the other side. The dream is a tale,
a story I tell, drawing us in to a new space,
encircling us in common light.
When everything vanishes but the light
of memory, what will protect us inside
our lines, this darkly echoing space?
Will it be the red handprint of our dreams
hovering over our heads, this thread of a tale
raveling, or the way I see your eyes shining?
Fisherman, you haul your nets in the shining
evening, your straining limbs pollinated by light.
Princess, you descend from the tower into the tale,
crumple, rise, redressed, victorious. Inside
our story, we do not live in grace but dream
of transformation, a new path to that open space
in the grasses where we reassemble our bones, pace
backward, then reclaim the panther whose shining
teeth dismembered the dimensions of our dream.
Third child, Grimm’s little girl had it right: light
is the only way to fill us from the inside
out, the match in her apron pocket, the tale
a bright window against the dark forest. We tell
and grow new with every telling, amazed by the space
we shape, the way we regard one another inside it.
—from Escape Artist