Dreaming the Mother Archetype

In the dream the earth seems to awaken, then uncover

A form, a buried memory, half-forgotten theatrics

And endless pages of notes and lines of memory

Then the tail-end of a night’s lament turning in on itself

And me, now on my knees, reduced to tears, and carrying

The remains on my mother, to the kitchen or public

Square where I, so steeped in grief, can hardly speak.

.

The architecture of the dream seems to fill in,

Offering projected scenes like my daughter

Ascending a staircase wearing a long, white bridal

Dress and I want to take her back to the meadow

Where we sat after her grandmother died, looking

At the flighty cirrus clouds and the face hidden

In the lumpy cumulus with streaks of silver hair

That surely belonged to my mother, sketching

A soft and pleasant route to heaven, a stairway

Decked in gold and then mourning towers

Holding her, who is bathed in a white shroud

Between a nun and a priest speaking Latin

In their benediction zone as I, governed

By the ample red dots on the hospital floor,

Made my way to the coroner, deeply

Underground, waiting for the dead to talk.

.

I am now standing next to a modest altar

With two lit candles and a vase of violets

That have remembered my mother’s name,

Reaching out through the expanse of the dream

To a long-dead brother, explaining I’ve cared for

Our mother for many years, until her last words

That “life is hard” and now I carry her remains

In a bag, box, or somewhere deep inside

My heart, my being, begging this shadow

To say the words I cannot say, and provide

Relief and direction for a lost soul,

Grateful for a small hint of resurrection.

.

The dream opens to a theater scene with people

Dressed to the Nine’s, as my mother often said,

While I wear sackcloth, looking almost beggarly,

Still carrying her in my head and my heart,

Hearing what might be operatic sounds

Rising from rolls of music sheets

Perhaps “Carmen” in which the Spanish

Gypsy seduces a young soldier

And the dream takes me back

To family talk of World War 1

To my mother’s first husband

And the wounds that would take his life.

.

I am now talking to a woman in a backyard

About holding memories and tokens inside.

I wander off to remove a fallen tree limb.

As I lift it, it breaks into three pieces

And as I reach to retrieve the pieces

They break again, leaving a pile of brush.

The woman reappears, dressed in black

And looking like a medieval scholar.

She said: “We break what we hold too close.

And then the dead can never rest.”

At this, the sackcloth seemed to slip from my body

And the red dots on the hospital floor

Bleed out to the edge of the dream

Changing path and compass

Another map, another canvas

And another way to go home.