Attic Pantoum

When I return to dream in the attics of yesteryear, I never go down again.
—(Gaston Bachelard)

Live wasps slow in a grimy window.
Dead husks on the sill; webs between the beams.
Gray wooden planks, the light hallowed, filtered,
like the light in an abandoned chapel.

Dead husks on the sill, webs between the beams:
One night my brother and I had the same dream—
in light like an abandoned chapel
a body flaked to dust in a casket.

One night my brother and I had the same dream;
we were in our childhood attic.
A body flaked to dust in a casket;
all our lives we kept the secret.

We were in our childhood attic:
gray wooden planks, the light filtered, hallowed.
All our lives we kept the secret—
slow wasps dying in a grimy window.

 

© Patricia Fargnoli