Dreamlife of a Mime              
                  

On the mountain, a hundred cloud shadows.
In her cup a single coin. Behind her eyes
the white stare of the soul.

Avignon. The Papal Palace Square.
Her eyes open the moment a coin clinks.
Wind sweeps down from the mountain.

Her body is a horse galloping
down streets she can almost recall.
The ground buckles. Pebbles spin.

Her grief is a horse. Galloping.

Each day she fasts from words.
She enters the silence as a temptress:
Salome unveiled.

When she slides the tube of elastic cloth over her body
her mood and gestures change.
Images obsess her.

Phantasms file toward her on the Papal Palace steps.
One smiles and stops to offer
his severed head as a lantern.

The tape recorder clicks.

Through the strains of an oboe
she cartwheels on the sun god's thigh
and feels the force of their duet.

She stretches toward him. Away from him.
His hands reshape her into a bowl.
As the moments pass.

As the bells chime lullabies. Elegies.

People pause to watch.
Human voices mean nothing.
Her arms slice air. Her torso bends.

Eruptions of change. Her knee rises.
Her fingers. Point to the sky.
Stasis in movement.

The oboe broods.

In the nuanced light her pelvis shifts.
She steps backward. Forward.
Desire is molded in the clay of her body.

A coin drops in the cup.

A camera whirs.

Yet the distance holds her.
Hunger floats and twirls
in the thousand gestures of a dream.

As the music slows.

As she wakes to remember herself.