But a Dream

A new, yet unpublished poem by Prartho Sereno

We’d sung it, merrily, as we row-row-rowed

across childhood, but today my brother looks at me

askance. I’m fresh from India—in kurta and dupatta

the colors of marigold, a rosewood mala, redolent

of the faraway. Feathers and crows’ caws

in my hair. So, you think this is all a dream?

I haven’t said such a thing and wouldn’t, especially

now that any aptitude for parsing this dream from

that one has run hopelessly amok. And what he doesn’t

realize is that in India the thief is considered

an emissary—a sacred runner, sent to keep us real

by stealing off with our dreams.

If we come home empty we consider ourselves

blessed—which is how I sit now, at the picnic table

with its checkered cloth, spills of popcorn and summer

beer, here in the card game where it’s my good fortune,

once again, to lose.

Okay, he says, fist-bumping the tabletop as he

presents his closing argument, If this is a dream,

then who’s dreaming it?

He looks out at the blackening yard, alive

and blinking with fireflies, but almost as quickly

turns back—eyes under water—to say,

Somehow, I suddenly think I know who.

In order to view this poem as the author intended it to appear with all its indents, we suggest reading it on a computer screen or in the landscape orientation on your phone.