On My Father (and Spring Cleaning) With Poems

I have drafted a lengthy post about using The Tarot cards to explore our dreams. It will be posted soon. My roommate’s having a house guest in a few days and our apartment needs a bit of “spiffing up." It's time for spring cleaning, anyway. Therefore, no lengthy posting work today. Just two poems, the first is dream-based:

HE WANTS TO KNOW

she had felt the movement
in the corners of her dreams,
large things dragging about

never certain if they were
coming or going, here or there,
she settled for the short view:
this dream must surely be a memory
and that one simply a worry

all the while sensing
that entire continents
could well be folding under
or raising up,
just beyond her vision

and then one night
he enters through a door
she had not known was there,
tersely demanding if she intends
to wax the floor
and when, pray tell,
will she take up residence
in this new apartment
of her heart

(written July 1995; dream-based)

.... and, no, I do not intend to wax the (kitchen) floor. :-)

When I wrote the above poem I was not thinking of my father, nor did the dream itself put me in mind of him at the time. However, on reading it now I hear a decidedly familiar tone at the end, much like one my father used with me on occasion.

I did not sleep well at all last night. Being able to sleep (and dream) has been one of the few sustained blessings throughout my life. So I find it very upsetting and enervating on those rare occasions that I can’t get back to sleep when I wake in the wee hours. I know how sensitive I am to the anniversaries of intense events in my life. So today being the anniversary of my father’s death may have been what was agitating me unconsciously. I only consciously remembered this anniversary when I got up and around to (belatedly) begin my day. Below is one of the poems I’ve written about my relationship with my father, a deeply troubled but ultimately healed one. (In a future post I’ll write about how, after his death, I worked through to the healing of our relationship.)

FATHER POEM IV

Forgiveness of you cannot be this almost absence,
this quiet utility like a pair of old shoes.

Forgiveness should arrive on blazing feet,
bursting my heart with trumpets,
strewing your grave with spectacular flowers.

Forgiveness of you cannot be what was wearing
so painfully into shape, raising blisters of regret,
smothered in rage and self-pity.

Forgiveness should simply alight, pristine,
untouched, untrammeled, radiating wisdom,
a white dwarf sun.

But here forgiveness waits, open and serviceable,
like old shoes I try on
hoping they can carry me through.

The shoes fit.
I wear them.

(written September 1988)

May we all find fitting resolutions to our troubles.

And, Gut Pesach!

Resource: Poetry Archives at eMule.com. This is an archive of classical poetry, something I (and many other poets) would probably do well to read more often.

‘til next time, keep dreaming,

Roswila
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