Contemporary Arts

Rewinding Dorothy

by Elizabeth Edwards

My daughter begs me to make her sing again.
I walk Judy Garland backward on the screen;
arms awkwardly splayed the way the blind see

with trust first, then fingers
curling through hay and her dog's warm fur
just before she sensed a rainbow above the gray stage.

Such artifice: the string that swings the lion's tail
a zipper up his shaggy back, the twisterÑfans
and spinning muslin. And when Buddy Ebson almost died

from aluminum dust, they replaced him
with a man who knew my daughter's crying trick:
weeping gets you what you want. By midnight, she's won

the horse that changes color, six times replayed.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtainÑ
gaze into the flames where a hazy parallel life

reveals me sipping lemon ice before Ghiberti's golden doors
with my art students. A lover cooks white quince for me
in a basement flat, and every afternoon leaks

pink and saffron. But it wasn't the same horse.
For each shot they trotted in a different dyed mare.
And rewinding, I realize she never wanted home;

having dipped her feet in ruby blaze
as dancing girls twined ribbon in her hair, she knew
where she belonged. Ignore the seamsÑsemblance

is all you need to spin what you're destined to lose
back into being: a daughter just laid down to sleep
reaching up for more kisses. Or blinking dry snow

from your lashes as you wake in paper poppies;
everything ahead, emerald-shimmer so that
there she is again, beginning.