Dream Poem, No. 1, Hot Tub Resurrection
Once she dies my mother bothers to visit. She strolls into this dream, naked and strong, across an impossibly green lawn that slopes up toward the patio of the house where I wait. Something keeps me from crying out, intruding on whatever it is that is happening. I wonder whose house this is. Something keeps me from turning around to find a door, some sign of where I am. Stage right a bison rushes in, charges and gores my mother. The attack so sudden neither of us screams. Without faltering or acknowledging the wound, my mother continues up the steps toward me. Close-up she looks a little like Christ, if Christ had been a woman, which seems sacrilegious to think, but there’s the hole just below my mother’s small breasts, a hole that looks like a lance wound. Impossible to think Momma ever this young, the stretchmarks on her thighs and butt not yet arrived. She descends into the hot tub, unnoticed until now. I am afraid she might invite me to join her. Naked as she is. Vulnerable. Long dead. She doesn’t. She seems satisfied with her solitude. The hole in her side doesn’t bleed. My mother smiles when the hot tub steam lifts her toward heaven.
This poem was published in What Couldn’t Be Fixed, Seven Kitchens Press, August 2024, but wanted to share because I’ve been taking a Dreams and Poetry on-line class through Orison Books, taught by Bruce Beasley. Watch for more dream poems.
A note: per a fellow poet’s suggestions, I dropped the last phrase in this revised version. He was so so right. Thanks DR.
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blackhen 