A STRAY DREAM Poem by Paula Meehan

It's a happy dream though in it you were
Humping some dancer in a run down gaff

A seafront hotel out of season where
I'm in a kitchen on the single bed

I've pulled from a drawer like the silk scarf
Of the seafront carny man who's filling in for

ManDuck The Magician star of stage and screen
I saw earlier that day at the end of the pier

I had sheets of Belfast linen but you
Had the dancer. And had her again

While the dawn struggled to break on the sea
And break on the quick and the slow and the dead

When I woke the next morning under the bed
Dustdevils, feathers and some child's brown shoes