“Hungry Heart”

The dream music was delivered in the alto range

By what sounded like a small chorus of sopranos,

Singing a line from the Bruce Springsteen song,

“Hungry Heart,” decorating my dream space

With the anthem: “Everybody’s got a hungry heart,”

That floated over and inside of me

For what seemed like most of the night

Along with a fragmented story line,

About a guy who left wife and child,

Went for a ride and never came back.

.

I woke with this refrain on my lips

That now seemed like an invitation

Rather than a curse, a matter-of-fact

Admission from the singer that

You “lay down your money

And you play your part.

Everybody’s got a h-h-hungry heart.”

.

Then I remember a recent CBS “Sunday Morning”

Interview with the singer who on air

Was back in the composition room

With notebooks for his album “Nebraska,”

Recorded when he was thirty-two,

Telling the interviewer that this music

Is about choices, self-advocacy

And happiness, no matter the risk

Joined by a neighbor Jack, on a barstool.

.

The singer found his inspiration

In Tennyson’s 1842 poem “Ulysses”

In which the title character decides to leave

His Kingdom of Ithaca to discover

Lost glory still waiting on the open sea.

He will abandon the home with the hearth

And swallow every last drop of life,

As a proper gift and salute to old age.

.

I seem to have gone around the world

But remain fixated on the Springsteen anthem:

“Everybody’s got a hungry heart,”

Though the Tennyson spark brings me in,

Perhaps because old age is staring me in the face

And I have had my share of barstool chats

Beginning with my halcyon Navy days

And enough mileage to flood a compass

As I tested my fate against the tide.

.

Jung now beckons and invites me

Beyond the hardware of the day,

The New World magic that

Tennyson placed in Ulysses’ path,

To take a less expansive way,

Wrestling with my shadow, the darkness,

Shunning ocean adventures

For what Jung called soul work,

Down and under, into the psyche,

On the back of dreams and “Active

Imagination,” finding the self within,

While discarding the trappings of ego,

But still remembering the Springsteen chorus

That “everybody’s got a hungry heart”

But this time the adventure lies within,

As the dream announced on my night sky,

Blocks letters written on my being,

Language expressively for the spirit,

And a final going home.