(in memoriam Freda Downie, 1929-1993)
In good times the gray-cloaked, feathery word
moves like a monk through mist
or like the mist itself.
Footsteps speed an economy of care.
An apple left overnight on a sill
is hard and cold to the touch come morning
and one wonders that it retains its sweetness.
The eyelids are sore with the effort of dreaming
and daylight fills the room like an accusation.
Only the deeply naïve and the half-blind
have continued the project of dream analysis.
For once she agrees with the snobs.
Everything is everything or something else
which is itself its opposite.
The only counter-argument is a grab
for the bottle or the unbuttoned passing blouse.
He would have her face her demons,
grappling with them in some hygienic hall of mirrors,
bleachers groaning with bifocaled gladiators.
Her own preference runs to mayhem and suppression.
One toys on, pinches the tail of the crimson panther,
nods in the general direction of the bridge,
arranges a rendezvous and stays put.
‘Clarify us with your glass eye, enter
the room as the walls collapse around you.’
Thus speaks Doctor Dee,
fresh from a session of therapeutic screaming.
His notion of her dark side is a pair of handcuffs
and a teddy bear named Caligula.
He makes perfect sense if one is a willow in a haiku,
and dubs each flea with its literary nickname, humming
like a mother rat at lullabye.
When he runs his hands
through his hair, clings to some frustrated verb,
she can almost see the ashram taking form
behind him, yellow robes and orange banners
and a lake for skipping stones.
She wishes
she could remember the name of the bird
he reminds her of.
He reads her eyes as though he were a lie
detector and every sigh is sighed, subtly
as a moment of high drama among the thatch-
roofed rustics.
He asks her to stand in the middle of the bridge
and let him take her photograph, to remember her
as she was before she jumped.