Looking Glass

Did I dream it this way
or did it just happen,
like the accidental passing
of a bicycle beneath
a Paris window
as I sipped orange juice

and dissembled the morning
headline.  Red frame
and boxcart wheels
rolling like a world war two
film around the corner
and down the cobblestone
street.  Did I dream it?

Back to the paper.  You
were painted across 'Les Loisirs'
opening your film.  I groped
for the present.  Did I dream it?
But there you were
your gleaming smile
like the old front-row gas lights
that lit up vaudeville,

and there you were too,
asleep in our canopied bed,
an angel with a secret.  I sipped.
Paris was alight with your
beauty, you were 'le testament
a la vieille beaute'.  I chuckled.
And then thought back and back

in the past, where we both poor
and working too hard, and slightly
unhappy.  I remembered dreaming
a poem like this one, and found
it easy to recognize my prescience
as a grandiose gesture of love. 
A morning poem of love
to keep us both alive and hoping.

I chuckled.  Did I dream it?