The Black Room

          She thought she woke up.

          Black willow shadows for walls

          of her room. Was it sleep?

          Or the star-dancer come for her dance?

          There are stars who have names, who are

          dreams. There are stars who have families

          who are music. She thought she woke up.

          Felt for skin, for alive and breathing blood

          rhythm. For clothes or an earring she forgot to

          take off. Could hear only the nerve

          at the center of the bone—the gallop

          of an elegant horse. She thought she woke

          up. Black willow shadows for walls she

          was younger then. Her grandmother’s house

          sloped up from the Illinois River in Oklahoma.

          The house in summer motion of shadows breathed in cool

          wind before rain rocked her. Storms were always

          quick could take you in their violent hard rain

          and hail. Gritty shingles of the roof. Rat

          rat rat ratting and black willow branches twisting

          and moaning and she lay there, the child that she was

          in the dark in the motion. She thought she woke up.

          Joey had her cornered. Leaned her up against the

          wall of her room, in black willow shadows his breath

          was shallow and muscled and she couldn’t move and

          she had no voice no name and she could only wait

          until it was over—like violent summer storms

          that she had been terrified of. She thought she

          woke up. Maybe there were some rhythms that weren’t

          music; some signified small and horrible deaths

          within her—and she rode them like horses into

          star patterns of the northern hemisphere, and

          into the west.

          This morning she thought she woke up.

          Alarm rang and fit into some motion, some voice

          within her other being—a dream or

          the history of one of the sky’s other stars.

          Still night in the house, she opens

          herself for the dark. Black horses are slow

          to let go. She calls them by name but she fears

          they won’t recognize hers, and if the dance

          continues in nets of star

          patterns

                          would it be sleep?