Watch Her Disappear


Last night I dreamed that I was dreaming of you...
And from a window across the lawn I watched you undress
Wearing a sunset of purple tightly woven around your hair
That rose in strangled ebony curls
moving in a yellow bedroom light.
The air is wet with sound.
The faraway yelping of a wounded dog.
And the ground is drinking a slow faucet leak.
Your house is so soft and fading
as it soaks the black summer heat.
A light goes on and the door opens.
And a yellow cat runs out on the stream of hall light
and into the yard.

A wooden cherry scent is faintly breathing the air.
I hear your champagne laugh.
You wear two lavender orchids,
one in your hair and one on your hip.
A string of yellow carnival lights
comes on with the dusk,
Circling the lake with a slowly dipping halo
and I hear a banjo tango.

And you dance into the shadow of a black poplar tree
And I watched you as you disappeared.
I watched you as you disappeared.
I watched you as you disappeared.
I watched you as you disappeared.


Tom Waits