SELF-PORTRAIT IN SLEEP
In the dream the game
has begun but I don’t
care The ball feels tiny
in my hands like a toy
I would give my son
who does not seem to exist
but who I wish was watching
from the bleachers alongside
my Sunday school teacher
who told me I was going to hell
because I am making
everything the goal bending
to me as though in prayer my dead
grandfather somehow my coach
and he is crying because I can
dunk the ball despite the fact
that I seem to be dressed in
the suit I wore to his funeral
but my team does not mind
I rebound and pass the ball
downcourt with my eyes
closed as though in a dream
which this could never be
even though wheat has begun
to grow along the baseline
and around the edges of the court
and the large brown horses
we keep for my father’s friend Joe
have wandered into the gym which is
now a barn and tiny sticks of hay
are floating down from the rafters
like the feathers of long skinny birds
which are now flying through the
open windows and I worry it will be
impossible to make an outside
shot with so many things in the air
but then I notice the walls
and the ceiling have vanished
we are playing on an outdoor
court both teams and all the coaches
and fans are now in my driveway
somewhere in Oklahoma
and I begin to realize that
I will never make it back to
my real life because my shoes
have grown into the cement
and I cannot move anything
it is as though I am a statue
of myself in a place that is
and is not my home
and suddenly everyone is
gone and I am alone
in the middle of a field
except for all of the dead
[NOCTURNE]
So many things
are asked for
in that moment
before sleep
sets you in
its tiny skiff
and rows
you out
into the deep.
The self
is never more
the self than
when it is
alone,
which is to
say, at its
most needy
and thus
the time
we turn to
prayer, open
as we are,
not to being
filled, but
to being
even more
empty.
UNCERTAIN SELF-PORTRAIT
No one knows if the final item at the bottom of Pandora’s box (what the Greeks called elpis), was meant by Zeus to be a gift (sometimes elpis is translated as hope) or just another evil (sometimes elpis is translated as expectation, the most painful of all emotions), either way it waited the way the living and the dead wait for something to start and something to end which is not the same as expecting either, the question though is if hope is the last (the worst) of Zeus’ evils or the one gift able to stand against everything let loose
