The Dream
Two moons, like old coins, hang bruised above the sea,
a daylit sky stitched with stars — wrong, patient and awake.
Giants sweep their lantern arms across a stitched horizon,
rays of marrow light that drift like ships through midnight’s throat.
In the forest the trees remember how to breathe in shadow;
needles stitch the dark, a dense slow fabric of hush.
Whisps of smoke—silver as gossip—curl around trunks,
whispering names the wind forgot, then swallowing them whole.
Beneath moss-lipped roots, a well breathes cold and grateful,
a black throat that keeps secrets like drowned faces.
A lighthouse leans on the cliff, one tooth missing from its grin,
its glass eyes blinking Morse at storms that are not storms.
Its stairwell hums with footprints that belong to no one,
and its lantern holds a pulse like a trapped heartbeat.
Below, the sea smashes like a hymn against memory,
a white-capped jaw that never learns the shape of land.
Jellyfish drift out of the fog like lanterns unanchored,
their translucent bells reading old poems in phosphor.
Snakes coil in the hedgerows of the woods, tongues tasting
little constellations fallen into underbrush—
they sleep with mirrors for scales, reflecting twin moons twice,
and slide through the dark with a map of places that were.
Inside an aquarium room in a house no door can open,
sharks circle in small, righteous tanks of glass and salt,
silver politics confined to four cold corners of water;
they know the names of tides the world forgot to teach.
Outside, rays sail on night like ragged constellations,
their fins hollow with winter, carrying cities in their bellies.
A child with sea-salted hair descends the lighthouse steps,
hands cupped for whatever night wants to offer her.
She drops pebbles into the deep well; answers plink upward
and the moonlight dips to hear them. Smoke comes to kiss her cheek,
a snake watches from a branch and blinks celestial green.
The jellyfish in the fog applaud in slow, bell-rung waves.
Above, the two moons quarrel in a hush of powdered light,
and daytime stars hum lullabies through the gulls’ wings.
The giants glide past like sleepwalkers tasting the air,
casting shadows that fold into the sea and never return.
The lighthouse throws itself against the battering brim of cliff,
seeking permission to collapse into salt and the small rubies of dawn.
When the child opens her mouth, a song pours out—coiled,
a braided thing with scales and fins and the dust of long storms.
It winds through trees and cracks the glass of tanks like thunder,
and the sharks go still, applauding with a thousand small teeth.
Smoke rises to catch the tune and turn it into smoke-wings,
snakes lift their heads and hum along, and jellyfish learn the chorus.
Night folds sideways, like a page turned in a book not finished,
the two moons press together and make a single bruise of light.
The lighthouse, haunted and holy, exhales its last stubborn beam,
and the sea, amused, rearranges the cliff’s surprised face.
In the morning that is evening, stars falling upward return to sleep,
and the forest keeps breathing the story under its breath.
Remember: if you listen near the well you can hear the moons arguing,
and if you follow the smoke, it will teach you how to forget—
but not the sound of sharks clapping quietly in small glass rooms,
nor the slow, inevitable tide of giants sailing the night.