Dream Sequence
The dream where the brother I don't know comes into my life
the one that was taken when I was little, to live elsewhere --
the stories they told us swim like fishes in the stone hatchery
packed tight against each other, but still slippery, shifting
like a fish's back breaking the surface
there he was, grown & living in some small town I had just found
& I grown, & walking up the steps of that old country store
turned now into organic market, & there the woman who loved him
who knew me at a glance because she knew him so well.
In the dream my mouth filled with tiny bits of metal
when I got excited, & I kept pulling them out so I could speak
she said "you're his sister, I'd know you anywhere"
& "he's not here now, but he will be soon"
& she pressed into my hands a piece of unlined paper
on it he'd written the names of the people
he cared most about, & how he acted with them
my mouth filled with metal so badly I had to leave
& drive for a while in my car, which was blue
at the beginning of the dream, but then turned red
the way dream cars do, driving wildly past furrowed fields
through dappled noon, fast as the car would go . . .
When I got back, he was there. He didn't speak at first,
but acted nonchalant, like every day I walked up the steps of that old store,
pulled open the door, looked up at him with half a smile --
she was right, we looked alike except for the height, and the maleness,
of cours, & it was dizzying to look at him & see myself so reflected there
& I knew I would have to get to know him in small doses, this man
like me but not me, white sparks blown from point to point;
the way a fever fills the body, the way a fever spikes & breaks
takes you completely, & then lets go.
Woman Wilde
(Posted with prior permission from the author) |
