Up at three-thirty this morning, after reading Spanish for half an hour, I turned to some of the dreams I recorded in 2008 and 2009. Several of them involved my mother and deceased father and my childhood home, and in several others there appeared old school friends, as well as a friend I had at the time who died in 2010. So many strange, familiar situations, filled with longing, color, […]
In his dream, he wandered the narrow, winding streets of an ancient city. Along the way, he saw an old blind woman selling nuts and grains, and a young boy carrying fresh warm bread to customers as yet unknown to him. Hearing his footsteps and smelling the bread, the woman bade him stop; this he did, bowing theatrically, as was his wont. Speaking in a singing sort of way, he […]
In the cool dark this morning there was a disturbance in one of the small trees a few feet from our open front window. A bird called out as if from a dream, in a tone of voice one doesn’t hear during the day. A minute or so later, a towhee spun a few notes, as if to say, I can’t see, but I can hear. This was repeated perhaps […]
Where does a dream end, and the act of remembering it begin? That’s like asking the storyteller if he knows he’s a ghost. The observer is observed, observing the observer, in a succession of night-blue mirrors. And the eyes in them are stars. Some are moving away, others drawing near. And here is the imagined space between them. Lost in San Francisco, I met a preacher who couldn’t speak, […]
When one posts blog entries almost daily for ten years, there are inevitable changes — in mood, certainly, but also in subject matter, style, and approach. And yet, written as they are by the same hand, they are familiar and recognizable. It’s a bit like visiting a waterfall during different times of the year: now the music is heightened; now the rocks are more exposed; and while the distance from […]
About these poems The Asylum Poems came into being in 2007 while I was taking care of my mother, who was battling Alzheimer’s Disease. The cycle of twenty short poems comprises the whole of Volume 15 of Songs and Letters, a much larger work begun in 2005 and completed in 2009. The poems were written early in the morning at my mother’s house, in a small bedroom facing the overgrown […]
November 25, 2009 My friend and I were in an elevator and when the door opened we stepped out into his village in Greece. The ground was lush with soft green grass. There was dew on the grass, and a drowsy blue dragonfly on his coat. There was a small gathering of people. They were his friends and relatives, but there were also some strangers present. In halting English, a […]
October 28, 2010 A child’s doll has died. At his request, I ask his mother for permission to conduct a funeral service in a language no one understands. This she grants. The doll is in a shoe box, beneath a fastened lid. Sunlight finds us in the street outside. A lone trumpet: inside the box, the doll begins to sing. December 21, 2010 My grandfather, alive again and in […]
I met a young father holding a baby. I had no idea who they were. I took the baby in my arms, held him up against my shoulder, and spoke gently to him. He smiled. I don’t remember what I said, but I think it was something simple and silly, but true. It’s been quite some time since I’ve held a baby — not a thought one has every day. […]
Although I’ve recorded and published many dreams, I have not written about sleep itself more than to say in passing that I slept poorly or I slept well, which is, really, a way of avoiding the subject. What a terrible night, I say, — and then move on to other things. Or, That’s the best I’ve slept in forty years, as if I could remember each and every night, and […]
