Painting by Ron PastuchaI’m thundering in a blaze of bright lights,
having forgotten too pay the tooth fairy,
on the Orient Express,
disembarking at Baker Street.
I step from the Victorian platform
I am falling, helpless, falling down stairs.
In the dark I hear rats
scraping like chalk on a board;
a nurse flicks the ECT switch,
I am levitating above my torso, my past -
I catch Nana singing
through her dementia, “roll out the barrels”
“doing the Lambeth walk, Ha!”
There’s a sundial in the secret garden,
a single plump candle, there are no shadows here,
I see no flame,
yet I burn my finger tips. Whispers
from a wishing well, whispering! Wishing?
A silver birch explodes;
Philias Barnham’s clowns appear, “roll up...
I part the tents canvas, medieval cold,
Monks in cashmere!
Like 1950’s secretaries scribing
with luminous quills in oversized books.
A face in a shroud looks up,
“the more I learn about dreams, the less I know
about the house of apples” He smiles.
Martin Cordray
Posted over on Applehouse Poetry
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