A Room for Dreaming

The state we are in

as we leave agent and owner,

the lease in our hands,

the room a dream come true,

the room where a deeper dream

will unfold.

A three-year lease. He doesn’t want to sell.

His son might use it for college,

his three-year-old son.

Galettes at Breizh, a new find—

might be the best in town, though any would be

in the state we’re in, the world perfect and full.

From one end of rue Vieille du Temple

to the Seine, dark waters, shivering,

a ghost memory, I dive in

to another river from my houseboat

on the Thames, swim to a swan

who hisses and strikes like a snake

my hand, protecting her cygnets.

We head east on the Quai d’Orléans.

There! Look! Right above Notre Dame,

Venus and Jupiter shine, so close

they seem to be signaling, so bright

they seem to be speaking.

And there! Two swans on the bank

of the Seine, one with head tucked into wing,

the other grooming his feathers.

I remember Zeus disguised as swan

ravishing Leda, her hyacinth-colored eggs bearing

Castor and Clytaemnestra, Helen and Polydeuces;

remember the swan poems we wrote the year

we met, calling out to each other,

“Cob!” “Pen!”

We look back from the Pont de la Tournelle

at Our Lady’s eastern face, the skull

that shows in the dark.

The sweep of light across the heavens

from the tip of the golden tower, Jupiter and Venus

like swans curved in embrace.

And it seems to us that all that matters

is that we turn again

and again to love.