by Barbara Daniels
She wakes a queen
dressed for the dream
that stunned her (lion
hurtling through white
wooden railings,
saint’s hand thrust out
from a wall of flames)
cranes from another
continent embroidered
on her nightgown,
lips smeared with cherries.
A door not a door
(hope pared, halved)
wavers through mist
and lilies, dark
at the threshold.
Beyond her window
birds float through
tracery drawn by planes
bound for Philadelphia.
She steps forward
into heat (blinds open
to sky, knobbed
fence, curve of shrub
in rising light).
BARBARA DANIELS’ book Rose Fever was published by WordTech Press and her chapbooks Black Sails, Quinn & Marie, and Moon Kitchen by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, WomenArts, Mid-American Review, The Literary Review, and many other journals. She received three Individual Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Photo: “Dream” by G.uilina
Psaltery & Lyre 