but name our children after them. I had a dream
about a family, not my own. A girl called Virginia
who could tie cherry stems with her tongue
even though they were sour and had dark hair
gathered with the long grasses in the field when I saw her
standing out there under a demonic-tasting night sky.
We give our children elegant names
then cut them down. Alex. Ella. I had a dream
about a family and in the dream I took hope-
it was shaped like a wire weathervane-
and turned it into a thing of misdiagnosis.
Deer from the field died in still water, lungs emptied,
secrets drew blood and I drew life
from the skin of the sisters in the family, with elegant names
In another dream I went to visit my father's grave-
he was just another soldier on the list of those remembered
after the first world war. In uniform,
in a picture on the stone memorial someone put there,
decorated in medals, gleaming sepia ribbons and coins.
There were poppies all over my feet, for Armistice,and the tall grass
in that field where he lay had grown gold, glowing, shimmering,
so it could not have been November. Maybe May,
My cousin was dressed as a princess when she arrived
to beckon me back into the shuttle bus home.
My sister stood by the window, squinting blindly out.
Then suddenly my cousin had jumped off the bus into the grass/
I lost sight of her glowing hair amid all that glow harvest.
Gold horizon, medals on war heroes,
the plastic crown part of her princess costume.