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"The Sleeping Gypsy"

By Michele Wolf Michele Wolf

Henri Rouseeau, 1897

In the heat of her dream, she hears

The iron kettle boiling, its scuttle and hum

As hurried as hoofbeats across a plain.

She drops in two guinea hens. Dancing

In a ring round her skirts, the children

Cheer, “Auntie, the English song!” Lifting

Her lute, she sings of the cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumping over the moon. How the little

Ones hoot when the dish runs away

With the spoon. Ah, spoon—an uncloaked

Lute, it waits to be strummed. The temptation of London, of Paris,

Of bumping along in the carriage with M. Philippe

In his top hat and greatcoat to visit

The peacocks, turquoise and gold and green, each

Roaming the Bois de Boulogne with one hundred eyes.

She sleeps in the desert, under a smiling full moon

That shines in the teal night. Quiet behind her,

A lion stands, tail erect, having sniffed

At her onyx flesh, at the ribbony stripes

His color-blindness darkens on her muslin dress,

All rainbow hues. She is lost in a dream,

Always happiest out of doors, without shoes.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Source: Poetry (August 1995).

Biography

Poet, teacher, and editor Michele Wolf was raised in Miami, but has spent much of her life in New York City or just outside Washington D.C., in Maryland. She earned degrees from Boston University and Columbia University, and began to write poetry seriously after winning a scholarship in non-fiction to attend the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. There, Wolf says, she had a “transformative experience…it was the first time I was . . .

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