In My Dreams

In my dreams I revisit
My childhood home,
In perfect condition and much enlarged:
Courses of cinderblock stairstep starward,
And grandiose lawns sweep boundlessly,
Yet, like a spooky, cobwebbed house,
The tenants are missing.
I feel their lingering presence, though,
My mother mostly,
Ghosting beyond my bedroom wall.
I get confused trying to reconcile
This cherished haunt with the multiple places
I've occupied since.
My bureau is stuffed with moldy credentials,
Endorsements devalued by obsolescence.
The closet's a jumble of hangered clothes
And bulging boxes of preschool toys
Stacked next to posters scrolled up in tubes.
I lie back down. Through the loury window
Some shadows threaten. Who dares intrude?
The specters are silent.
Sometimes I occupy Grandmother's room;
It's disconcerting.
I have an urge to urinate,
But amid the spaces pristinely preserved,
The bathroom betrays my memory:
The toilet's a wreck, unusable,
The drain in the tub is backing up,
And the basin taps refuse to flow.
The kitchen lamp faintheartedly glows;
Its overhead switch is broken forever,
Damaged perhaps by that freakish bolt,
A ball of lightning that (mother insisted)
Shot through the ventilation duct,
Spun the fan,
And skittered across the enameled range.
Outside, I can identify
Every evergreen clump in the mangy yard:
The ivies and scraggly forsythias,
The dowdy quinces, the roses of Sharon,
The lonely lone lilac, the prickly holly,
Abelias, dogwoods, and ragtag vinca.
And when I awaken for real, present day,
I must give my head an extra shake
To dislodge the last motes of deceptive dust.