Who is the woman in my dream?
How did she get there?
Whose is the face imprisoned,
Pressing against the bars?
No one I recognise,
No part of my waking experience
Yet there; anxious, fraught
Crying out, in my dream.
Half remembered on waking
She troubles me
What was she doing there?
Where did she come from?
Slowly it comes to me
I begin to understand
How she got into my head.
First there was my poem
About a sentence
A string of words
But also time in jail.
Then Mary's Writing Tips
Wanting to understand
How life can be turned
To fiction.
And reading her story
About a lawyer
Defending a man
Against a capital crime.
That chimed with the
Words I needed
To make a 13 word story
'Should Life Mean Life'.
And by strange coincidence
Of fate. I was persuaded
I should see, of all films
The Silence of the Lambs.
So here the answer lies:
Penned in her prison
Is my story
The tale I'm meant to tell
And the answer to a riddle too.
For it is here in my dreams
Jumbled, reassembled
Turned upon itself
That my story can take shape.
The truth returns
Misshapen but still true
Shaped in some unconscious depth
From life to some resemblance
Of Art.