Out another door — a meditation on a dream

My body left the hospital for a coffin and a grave.

You crossed the threshold back to life

and left by another door.

You carried a vase for flowers

opalescent blue and elegant,

empty save for a little water.

It puzzled you there were no flowers,

but consider what is in that vase:

My tears are there.

You bear my tears.

They are for you.

I was afraid of too much happiness,

but you were my container in life.

You held my sorrows.

Now you are carrying the tears I shed

while I was dying,  missing you:

Not a nice miss, not this one.

And now, what should you do

in this parking lot on the bare pavement

outside the institutional doors?

Just add your tears to mine.

Let us weep together the many colours of love and loss:

The blue, pink, white and yellow,

a play of colours,

waiting for roses.

And when the tears dry,

go to my grave,

gather my dust,

and treasure it.

Lorna Harris July 27, 2012

Thanks to the workshop led by poet Cathy Smith Bowers at the annual Haden Institute Dream Conference, I learned a new form for poetry - the pantoum. The pantoum, a series of repetitive quatrains was first written in Malaysia in the fifteenth-century. This is my first attempt; I haven't quite decided on the title:

The black mandala holds the answer

I am wandering around in the darkness.

There is nothing but black to be seen.

I don’t feel I’m in danger of falling.

I just don’t know where I am.

It is black so there’s nothing to see.

I walk slowly but without groping.

I just don’t know where I am.

Then I think, why on earth don’t I call you?

I walk slowly but without groping;

I don’t need my hands to shield me.

Then I think why on earth don’t I call you?

We’re still friendly – it’s silly not to.

I don’t need my hands to guide me.

I am safe here though all is black.

We’re still friendly – there’s no reason not to.

I should call you; we talked just a while back.

I am safe? Where all is black,

Without land marks or buildings or roads,

I must call you. We haven’t talked for some time.

Then slowly I start to realize, “It’s not me, it’s him.”

There are no landmarks or buildings or roads, but

Is dirt ploughed up all around me?

Then slowly I start to realize, “It’s not me, it’s him.”

And now on the cusp of awaking, I just want to go back to sleep.

But is dirt ploughed up all around me?

There’s a sense of not much being there.

Now on the cusp of awaking, I just want to get back to sleep.

But a new fact slips into my dream.

There’s a sense of not much being there –

Just the blackness and overturned earth –

When this new fact is put to me:

You can’t call him because he is dead.

***

So, I’m not in danger of falling,

I just don’t know where I am.

 

Poem:  Your Pigeon Dream

As a totem animal –  if that is what this is –  

a  pigeon is not much:

why choose a dirty, dithering coward of a bird,

toddlers like to chase?

Why not an eagle for mastery,

a cardinal for showiness,

or a robin for diligent worm-hunting?

 And on a motorbike?

that symbol of daring,  irresponsibility and roaring get-away –

where is that in my life right now?

And the trainer who comes and takes away the pigeon  –

why is he there?

for how do you train a pigeon?

If this were my dream,

I might think of him

as my pigeon’s guardian:

Keeping watch

over my dirty birdiness

until I park the bike

 and pause to love that despised part –

that part longing to be known –

 Then I would wonder – if this were my dream –

 in what way a such dirty, clumsy, stupid thing

might then hover,

graceful and holy.

Lorna Harris

February 17, 2011

Poem: Trying to understand trapdoors

My spells of grief are not as frequent now,

 for the season has changed,

 and winter has come.

October seems so long ago

It’s almost odd to think of you alive.  

Yet  there you are in my dream

In the hustle-bustle of dead souls:

Very professional – wearing your topcoat –

All business-like in a crowd – heading off somewhere.

You don’t see me standing behind the glass wall. 

Having watched you go,

 I turn and waken and think maybe my grief

has gone at last with you

 into the city of the dead.

But then, once more, without warning,

the trap door opens beneath my feet:

Just before I fall

 into the oblivion of grief,

 I recall that suddenness

of everything disappearing.

And I wonder

Is this how you died?

The heart-wrenching pain,

The hard fall – knowing this time it was not going to end well,

 As you dropped in the void.

[December 19, 2010    Lorna Harris]

Another Poem

Get-togethers

Before lunch in the parish hall,

the old women sit silently

at the long tables –

waiting for grace.

They are sharp-eyed, unsmiling, dour;

their wrinkles set in place by the confidence of duty –

waiting for grace.

I grip my plastic glass to the point of breaking,

I have just about smiled my face to pieces.

Such serenity as theirs is hard-bought.

I am brittle

and still

waiting for grace.

(September 29, 2010)

Poem: The framework of healing

Here is a short poem I wrote while I was convalescing from surgery last September. I have revised it enough - time for it to see the light of day:

 

The framework of healing

 

At home in bed after my surgery,

I gaze through the open window

into the poplar leaves,

which glisten and shimmer

in the autumn sunlight —

endlessly shushing,

sending their trembling vibrato down the branches,

which are not highways for the flighty squirrels after all,

but long nerve connectors:

the old dendrites

transmitting the impulses of those agitated receptors

to deep into the ancient ground 

beneath the window sill,

to a place I cannot see,

but where all my secrets are hidden.

Lorna Harris

September 2010