of the parlor whispers,
-sleep now, peace now, Mack.
-Soon, he whispers back.
In the dim gray light,
he sees a cat pad softly
across the floor.
She jumps up beside him,
sticks her nose close enough
to his face that he can
smell her dinner on her breath.
She pushes her body into the narrow
space between his arm and chest.
Her purrs blend with the soft whirring
of the swamp cooler and Mack slips
quietly into a dream of dreaming
beside a mountain stream.
It’s the summer before starting high school.
He’s dozed off on the short alpine grass
and moss high in the Sierra Nevada
beside a trickling black rock streamlet.
His cheek rests on the book he brought
putting a crease on page fifty nine
that will forever mark the spot.
It’s an empty city street, high noon,
uncomfortably warm but sunless, dull.
There’s a shop, doorless, just a curtain
hanging in the frame. A scent of frying
potatoes, baking bread, coffee, chocolate.
He's hungry and pushes through the curtain.
The cloth is rough, damp. He wakes
beside the stream a cougar is licking
his face. This dream inside a dream wakes
him from his dream on Red’s couch.
The cat is licking his face.
-Hi there, Puss, you saved me
from being a cougar’s dinner.
But let’s try to go back to sleep.
She turns and curls back into
her space beside him, and they
breathe softly, floating down
into the places where
other worlds persist.
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