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Sunday, January 30, 2005 |
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Apple snores softly nearby in a puddle of sunshine. Sally dozes in the shadowy doorway, in a sort of crouch; she is ever-vigilant, and she has a bad back. Around us the thirsty houseplants survive a little longer, homely ones--spider plant, ficus tree, snake plant, Swedish ivy. I can hear the fed cats tackle each other racing through rooms downstairs. I come out of meditation lifted up. The sun's yellow light through the high window pours over the back of my cropped head in a cloud. (Such dust!) The heat feels good against my achy neck. Warning: creepy dreams. Turn back now. First, a nightmare where I pierced my eyes with hatpins and let the ocular fluid drain. The ex-housemate's voice from two rooms away: "Come here and see this." "I can't." "Come here and see this." "I can't." "Come here and see this." "I can't." And then I went there and saw perfectly well, though blind. In the second dream, I reached into my womb through a pocket in my clothes at the side of my belly, and I pulled out five embryos. I examined them in my hand. They were of graduated size, from apple-seed to quarter, in their clear glassy bubbles of fluid, like large marbles with little pink-white creatures floating in them, like eyes with snail-shell pupils. I spoke happily with the guide woman who stands near me in dreams: "Look at all these brothers and sisters! But how can she possibly carry them all to term?" *** From The Mountain Poems of Stone House, translated by Red Pine (Port Townsend, Washington: Empty Bowl, 1986): 174 Cold Mountain has a line my mind is like the autumn moon I have a line of my own my mind outshines the autumn moon not that the autumn moon isn't bright but once full it fades no match for my mind always full and bright as to what the mind is like why don't you tell me
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