This poem explores the idea of falling asleep as an adult and dreaming about being a child. Though I could have categorized this poem amongst the other poems about dreams, I felt that the role of sleep in bringing out the innocence and naivety of childhood was more prominent than the idea of dreaming itself. The narrator speaks of her experience growing up during WWII, her innocence as a child countered by the brutality of war.
I laid myself down as a woman
And woke as a child.
Sleep buried me up to my chin,
But my brain cut wild.
Sudden summer lay sticky as tar
Under bare white feet.
Stale, soot-spotted heapings of winter
Shrank in the street.
Black headlines, infolded like napkins,
Crashed like grenades
As war beat its way porch by porch
Up New Haven's façades.
Europe: a brown hive of noises,
Hitler inside.
On the sunny shelf by the stairs
My tadpoles died.
Big boys had already decided
Who'd lose and who'd score,
Singing one potato, two potato,
Three potato, four.
Singing sticks and stones
May break my bones
(but names hurt more).
Singing step on a crack
Break your mother's back
(her platinum-ringed finger).
Singing who got up your mother
When your daddy wasn't there?
Singing allee allee in free! You're
Dead, you're dead, wherever you are!