‘A Child Half-Asleep’, by Tony Connor
Stealthily parting the small-hours silence,
a hardly-embodied figment of his brain
comes down to sit with me
as I work late.
Flat-footed, as though his legs and feet
were still asleep.
On a stool,
staring into the fire,
his dummy dangling.
Fire ignites the small coals of his eyes;
it stares back through the holes
into his head, into the darkness.
I ask what woke him.
“A wolf dreamed me,” he says.