Remember moments with the bedside lamp
when I’m at your side reading fairy stories
and the cat’s curled up asleep at the end of the bed
Then your eyes fought sleep and your ears grappled with dragons.
The light caved in from all directions but for the Mickey Mouse quilt,
the soft pink pillow, the sheets you pulled up to your chin.
A princess in a tower wasn’t it, a hero scrambling up its gray brick side.
That clash of sabers with the black-garbed villain.
And the dragon of course, a monster too large, too vivid,
too flaming at the mouth, smoking through the nostrils,
to creep up on you unawares, to lurk in closets, under beds,
when I closed up the book, turned out that lamp and left the room.
Here we have that dragon now, roaring sure, but red-faced,
all fire-breath, flapping his scaly wings, flogging the ground
with his long green tail, overplaying his role like the ham creature
he has always been, a buffoon, a clumsy oaf too witless
to defy the blade of cunning prince for more than half a chapter.
Sure, the doctors have their own terms for it.
But that’s what too much learning gets you,
over their heads in Latin and chemistry and diagrams
of muscle and vein and skeleton that are nothing like the people I know.
Look at them rushing about, in such a panic.
It takes a cool head to defend yourself
against what’s trying to devour you.
It’s eight o’clock and I must leave soon.
But look, the fight’s commenced, it’s in the open,
the troubles, our shadows, ourselves, pair themselves off,
so sleep child, get to the dream, the winning side’s in need of you.
