I
Margaret, Margaret, where are you going?
To faraway China: I hear the wind blowing.
Margaret, Margaret, where have you been?
Beneath the deep ocean, where dreaming begins.
Margaret, Margaret, What saw you there?
Bones thrown like crows' feet. Bracelets of hair.
II
And now, once more, like Lost Atlantis' fabled past,
you float up unexpectedly. Immense and lunar as you rise,
you turn to me as if to speak, and then abruptly sink beneath
a glittering, translucent sea.
And yet, somehow, the jeweled debris
you leave behind does not subside,
but churns and rises restlessly,
til it begets another dream:
this time a costumed pantomime
depicting foul catastrophe
with tinfoil comets, stars on strings,
and palaces awash with kings.