The Seventh Night of the Year

Pale faces thronging the dark —

the dream only fragments now,

fag ends or tangles of smoke ...

athletic bodies fighting

fierce and fast, like acrobats.

The dim light caught shaven heads,

naked limbs white against grey.

Or tumbling on a trapeze

higgledy-piggledy, but

there was still room for singing.

Singing and swinging alive,

disappearing in distance.

I was caught, one leg fastened

by intertwining others.

Perilous extrication

leaving me fully alone,

leaving me lying alone

on a floor I could not see,

surrounded by smoke too thick

to discern any image.

A distant smell of burning.

Seven turns of the clock face,

seven lean hours of the night.

Seven — number of challenge.

Seven explores the unseen.

I woke. My cat on the bed

leaping, pouncing on nothing,

continued to wrestle air.

The seventh night of the year

I made a spell for dreaming.

Did it gather all the dreams —

dreams of the politicians,

dreams of teenagers mingling,

pooling inside my one skull

in frantic kaleidoscope?

I remember a woman.

My dress was red and purple.

'These,' she said, 'are the colours

designating a priestess:

from base chakra up to crown

where the light collects and blooms

like an explosive flower.’

(When I was seven I knew

I would always be alone

inside the populous town

and the warm family home.

For why? I was the dreamer

'head in the clouds' and my feet

trailing behind, straying slow.)

At Poets United, our Midweek Motif is January Seventh and we are asked to write anything to do with the number seven. In this piece the structure echoes the theme: each line, including title, has seven syllables; and there are seven verses, each of seven lines.