Dreams Dreams
are palpable things these days.
I
can touch them, just
I
sleep close to
twirl
them
them around
Perhaps
I'll
in
from of me,
at night,
my
fingers during the day.
money
find
or fame or love, right at
my
fingertips.
With the others of my generation I
step
my ancestry
into the place
have
left
open for me,
into their places, determined to
do
better than they.
My mother who once held my
counted
tiny form,
my
transparent toes and
fingers—
which would
later curl
around her longer ones
to
be
led
through a busy
words
in
a grown-up world—
street,
now dwarfed by
her daughter,
my shadow,
behind me. She,
who once
in
my
place held the world stretched
out before her,
now
stepping back,
puts
away my
washes
clothes,
my dishes,
putting the
life
she hasn't finished earning,
toward mine.
And
I,
ignorant, not knowing, not realizing,
that the is
dream
at
her fingertips,
me.
Jennifer Williams