INTRODUCTION + POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART + HAAG'S BIO
Well, I approach this with blank mind
and a dream, fully awake but
bemused.
Spring warmth in the bird calls, breaking
light from the
horizon bursting into my
heart. Pink toward the north, blue toward
the south and the mountain, at last,
glimmering -- a shadow of a
ghost letting
light catching its skirt, its head stately,
its snow
thick frosting on the cake
of life. The sweetness of life seeping
into my lemony soul, the pleasantness of
being tap tapping at my
logarithmic brain.
In my dream. I wanted to move.
I can connect
this dream with nothing.
In the very corner of the window,
reflected in my computer screen, like an
idea of magnitude, the
rising sun aims
a beam through my room, into my
eye. I shall
rise, scream with delight.
I shall not mind the glare of
the
light. The dancing suns make it
impossible to see screen or thought,
impossible
to know what is written. Impossible. What
should I
write? The brilliant background plays
with the leafless tree printed
on my
screen. Its twigs reach toward my heart.
What was my dream?
Move where? How?
Into a whiteness whiter than here?
Where?
There was a crippled mind to take
care of there. The sun
was gone
from my window, risen into the light.
Here in the north,
it circles as
much as it rises. The plants respond.
They grew as
much yesterday as they
have through all the later days of
winter,
as if waiting for spring's instructions.
The ginger stalk fell.
Broke. The tef,
its weeping grassy blades expanding and contracting,
mirror the tears in my heart. Who
is this unseen Quasimodo I don't
mind
comforting in a world as bright as
pollen? Why would I move
from paradise?
There was a shaded swimming pool, more
cupboards
-- as here -- than I could use.
Was it here -- and the helpless wretch
my unborn kitten? My white, longed-for dreaded
and purring
companion who might wake my
heart from its somnambulant peace, its
ennui
its sleep? I lie in the darkness
of paradise, listen to a
motor whir,
decide it is the refrigerator, wake slowly
in the dawn.
Am I sitting on
the windowsill, discalced. exercising my fragile,
nascent
wings -- little, dark, sparrow wings? -- not like
the
mighty whites of angels. Thoughts of
the migrations of small
butterflies sustain me.
Here I am careening through sky, circling
around the sun's rim growing warmer. Ash
of volcanic explosions
circles the earth from
time to time, darkening the life-sustaining
light,
killing earth's creatures. As the cinder fog
clears, with
the new dawning sun, others
flourish. The earth will not weep at
our departure, nor will the sun weep
when its light goes out. I
close
my eyes. Evolution breeds in the dark.
#37 BLISS
INTRODUCTION + POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART