Nights we could not sleep—
       summer insects singing in dry heat,
              short-circuiting the nerves—

Grandma would light a lamp,
        at the center of our narrow room,
               whose clean conspiracy of light

whispered to the tall blank walls,
       illuminating them suddenly
              like the canvas of a dream.

Between the lamp and wall
       her arthritic wrists grew pliant
              as she molded and cast

improbable animal shapes moving
       on the wordless screen:
              A blackbird, like a mynah, not a crow.

A dark horse’s head that could but would not talk.
       An ashen rabbit (her elusive self)
           triggered in snow

that a quivering touch (like death’s)
       sent scampering into the wings
              of that little theater of shadows
    
that eased us into dreams.