Dream Antics in a Zebra Crossing

The dream in its emphatic musical way,

Perhaps subtitles hanging from ceiling fans,

Stirs up a short, thin, wispy male

Figure, cartoonish in a ‘50’s suit,

Mustard yellow and loose on his frame,

Who pokes holes in a zebra crossing

With a cane ready to become a sword,

Suggesting Laurel from Hardy fame,

Til the dream space mimicking a thumb’s down,

Introduces instead a 1925 cover of Time,

Long-held in my magazine locker,

With Charlie Chaplain, “The Little Tramp”

Who would later be knighted, but in my dream

It’s another clown in the zebra crossing,

Walking through the luscious alphabet

Like his hair is on fire, throwing

Letters to the wind until these symbols,

After a fling with consonants gone awry

And too many vowels to fill his bowler hat,

Finally agree, serving up a riff

Of slumbering Z’s, final scene, final call,

Master comic, wall-to-wall.