Dream Journal III

April 12^th

I wake up from a dead end dream—

trying to remember the last name

of someone I never knew,

trying to recall a recipe

for something I never baked.

April 15 -

Sweet Mistakes

Vance has an amazing relationship

with his voice, “Are we going to do this?”

he asks Ellis. Then out it comes, with

the force of all heaven and earth--

he sang our wedding song to us,

right there in the club at our table.

May 7

“Oz never did give nothin’ to The Tin Man,

that he didn’t, didn’t already have.”

It’s May.

It’s mid-May

It's after Lilac Festival, May 20

and still I reach for my gloves

to go for a walk.

It’s late May here.

May 28

I’m gonna love you ‘till nobody else

loves you come feign or come sigh.

Happy together in indecent weather

Oh, won’t you be mine?

Little Sentient Beings

The tiniest, most annoying insects

I’ve ever encountered inside are

darting in multiples in and around

my journal like miniscule Mexican

jumping beans on the one nice summer

night I open the enclosed porch windows.

I plead with Lou to explain why they are here.
Are they emerging from some decaying pod I found

on a walk and brought in? Or drawn to some scent?

Of what? Ink? Hand cream? A few grains of sand

still clinging to the pile of Block Island rocks

heaped in a bowl on my writing room desk?

They are furiously agitating around his work

also, but he seems unperturbed, not concerned

that they might infest our whole house. “They will

be gone tomorrow,” he says. “How do you know?!”

I ask. “I don’t think their life span is very long,” he

says, as he closes the door, giving them the room.

It was then I felt their intensity,

as mine melted to sadness.

Spring Forward Fall Back

March 17

We lost an hour this week

and each day I lost it again.

Sunday

The leap in time—late lattes and

scones with my niece, her pals,

a precious hour in another town.

Monday

Scheduling mix ups sent me

twice to the same doctor, twice

to Wegmans, twice back home.

Tuesday

Which hour—the extra time it took

to pick-up my normally dropped-off

grand daughter? Or the moment that time

stopped for us both, as a wild turkey flew by

at eye-level, missing my windshield by inches?

Wednesday

The hour that I travelled back to high

school, thanks to the boy who taped, the

man who found, and the one who posted

a recording of my dear, dear friend singing

her Brigadoon songs—bringing her back to life.

Thursday

Reading Sports on Reachout Radio on top

of my regular section—lost in a foreign land.

What hour will slip away on Friday? One

Year they’ll stop this nonsense and keep

Daylight Savings time all year. But if

they do it before we Fall Back, that hour

will always be lost, like a hole in the ground,

that once housed a nest of bunnies, or

a hole in the sky, that once knew a star.

Holly and Eric

August 24th

Holly takes us on a quest

to find the blue bird

of happiness.

No, really.

September 1^st

Eric calls from his cell phone:

“I just wanted to tell you

that you’re going to be . . ."

In that tiny gap before he

says “a great aunt,” I think

he is going to say “famous.”

Maybe he’s written music to one

of my poems that’s becoming a hit?

But no, he says: “Great Aunt.”

For a second I think, I am

a great aunt. Then, “What?!!!”

“We’re going, that is, Holly

is going to have a baby!”

Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God.

That night, after Blue Bird, at the

George Eastman House, I recall

Lou saying, “Holly looks quite radiant

tonight.” Inside I knew what he meant,

but I just said, “Yes, she always does.”

Holly took us to see Blue Bird

so we’d understand why

they must migrate home.