Nightmare Songs: 6

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6.

They offered me soup—I shook them off. And their grins!
The wooden floors of these old buildings smell with snow-water.
The entryway’s lined with travelers’ worn shoes,
their smocks and heavy cloaks.
My grandparents belonged to their mutual antiquities.
This, the soft ache that reminds us
of our toes among limbs, that wakes us in the night
to rub this out by touching.
And we reach across for another cosmos to wreath our brows.
We are not, after all, giants in our beds.
Clouds do not pass through our ears
as easily as our own voices over rocks.
There went even the music of orbit into our cold glasses
and we found ourselves standing neatly
in the green shadow of a building.