Poetry: A Translucent Dream

A Translucent Dream


He read the classics, Huck Finn twice,

And took coffee black with sugar.

When I was a girl, I took sugar and cream,

And wrote poem after poem

And wrote dream after dream

Of the houses and the people in this town.



Remember when I went to your town?

You kissed good, and how I missed your sugar!

Under your sheets, we made love twice.

My skin was dark, against yours, (a fair cream)

And I showed you that poem

And dreamed the sweetest dream.



It was night and the snow fell like sugar

When we were driving into town.

You stopped for a coffee; I took mine with cream.

That winter, I read her book of poems twice,

And dreamed less real dreams

So I just drank the poems.



Remember sleeping in church, twice?

Once in the morning, and you woke from a dream.

Next at midnight– we were the only kids in town.

Looking up at the ceiling, painted cream,

I recited to you one of The Small Poems:

We sat at the table with nothing but sugar.



On your birthday, I thought the salt was sugar

So I made your cake twice,

Then bought vanilla ice cream.

Your friends came from out of town

And I found my old poem

About the wildest horses, and the wildest dreams.



After the end I wrote you a poem.

She said, a love affair merits a poem twice:

When it is stale and when it has sugar.

We met in my saddest dreams.

You were a ghost in my town,

A shimmering translucent cream.



Night sky is a poem, and the moon is cream

Dashed with sugar for stars in my town,

Twice baked, but only in that dream.

~ By Rachael Taylor ~