Jane O. Wayne
NIGHT TRAVEL
When we couldn’t sleep last night
you told me your dream
about packing for a trip,
some destination never specified
but clearly urgent,
the last-minute rummaging
that went on and on,
while your movements dragged
as if through thigh-high water.
You were opening a closet—a wet coat,
a leaking roof—when, dream opening
onto dream, it came back to me
that I’d been sorting through
the same drawers and closets,
while a plane (or was it a train?)
its engine running, like a worry
through a head, was somewhere
on the outskirts of the dream
ready to leave without us.
Lying in the dark, we grew quiet
watching headlights sweep the walls,
the incandescent streaks like meteors
across the bedroom sky.
How quickly, too, you drifted off
without me—as if moments earlier
I hadn’t heard my dream
first spoken on your lips.
