A Delicious Uncertainty (A Poem)

She comes as if at the end

Of a prayer, the budding enterprise

Of a man’s dream

Or the habit of his projection

Placing her at some height, on some

Mountainside with laurel and thin air

With two souls moving in and out

Of each other’s space, no subject

No object, just movement

Mirroring each other’s image

Not seeing but feeling

And she remains just out of reach

On the horizon, on the periphery

Compass sure and confident

The dream is now swallowed

By its shadow side, coming down to earth

Off the mountain ledge of pure seeing

And Anima enters the house

As a young woman boasting

About saving money on the rent

And the dreamer understands

The nuts and bolts of the day

The flesh and blood of discourse

And is not alarmed to find his love

In the kitchen where they touch

Each other, as through a curtain.

Now other shadows, other warnings

Fill the domestic space

That the two souls do not hear

Because they enjoyed a hint of carnality

And they seem to look at each other

As art, as abiding archetypes

As theater, masks dropping

By the torpid hundredweight

And opposites joined

In delicious uncertainty.