There's a Woman in the Room by John Grey

She shines as if she’s floated down

from the twinkling villa windows,

as if she were a tidbit from the stars,

as if she swam between tufts of cloud

and through the tree-tops,

becoming less thin and distant,

less a vapor with each hungry mile.

I remember how when, as a little boy,

startled by a bad dream,

I'd open my eyes upon the midnight landscape,

stare frightened into the nothingness,

until trembling and breathing hard,

my fingers would grip tight against the pillow,

pull the room out of the blackness

back to me, tile by tile, brass gas jet

by dresser photograph,

until my night vision saluted

what I expected to be there

But now, as an older, wiser man,

a brief interlude

with the unfamiliar

is more opportunity than demon,

more wish-fulfillment than dread.

What’s it matter

that my senses have no role to play

on what I’m seeing and feeling.

There’s a woman in the room.

Once she would have terrified.

Now I am expecting her.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Harpur Palate and Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.