Skipping Forward

A gale-gull in the stormcloud of her head
I’m dreamed back by my daughter, in the bed
Where she is ancient. I of course am dead
And hoisted from the underworld.

I’m barely middle aged. She is astounded
That love should finish here, just where it started.
Beached on the Ithaca so long departed,
Young ghost and aged girl, our times confounded.

Tonight she’s six. We’re reading Treasure Island
In her bunkbed’s crow’s nest. Woken by a siren,
And, tears-of-joy surprised at our reunion,
she finds me skipping forward to the end.

The cyclone curls are black, not white,
And this has been my dream, not hers.
I put her down like a poem, sweet
still unfinished thing, and go downstairs.