dreampoem: the words, engraved 

Well, it’s 6 a.m. here in New Hampshire 
and I’m in Paris, again. 
My small group has just arrived. 

I’m among throngs 
strolling between two looming walls 
plastered with sooty metal plaques 
crowded top to bottom, side to side, 
too dim for reading. I wonder how the others can, 
a Japanese woman, scads of young people milling about.
 
I think about using the phone’s flashlight 
but feel it may be blasphemous. 
A few others shine phonelight on the inky walls 
but I wait. 

The air becomes a little brighter, gradually whitens, 
and when I read “I’m in here” inscribed on a darkly rubbed plate, 
I realise some of these are tombs, this one 
storing a French man, a comic actor. 

I’m in a French shop in Paris, 
two-story, wooden, crowded. I’m engrossed, 
looking around, touching things. 
Downstairs there’s a necklace with many tiers, 
silver disks, harmonious and smooth, each disk in a row 
stamped the same: the word “scent” on disks in one row, 
“butterfly” engraved on disks in another, 
and a dozen more strands each with different words. 
Noticing blank disks, I turn them over to find 
words on the underside.  
  
Now it’s 6:10 a.m. in New Hampshire 
and I am not in Paris. I am listening to light rain 
outside the window, remembering the cool gleaming 
disks of the necklace, the metallic dark 
plates of the tombs, the anonymous crowds, the dimness 
and the awakening light, the words, engraved. 

© MMWms 2020

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