Sketching the Dream Goddess

The night opens on itself, with atmospherics

Consistent with the dream space, shining

On mountaintops that ring the field of inquiry

Like a jutting frame, an uneven canvas

That rescues pigments, streaking bits

Of ether, flotsam, untidy remnants

Looking for form, meaning and destination

Along the cirrus periphery that takes

Every whisper, every rhumb line delivery

Of the brush, even ones prompted by the divine,

Into a pulsating portrait zone that comes alive

With head shots and head fakes, for heaven’s sake,

Along some domestic latitude lines, serenaded

By a distant professional voice, calling out “James”

A name that is “I,” then me in a mask

As dream spotlight continues its compass

Through times and longitude, stopping at a female

Statue in a long flowing gown, dominating

The mountaintop and I say, as to the goddess

Of music and dance, “Most High Athena,”

Before awakening to my role in the Euripides play

“Iphigenia in Tauris” as a king who says

He had lowered his head to God’s word spoken

And still acknowledges her, a half-century later,

The dream mask slipping from my eyes

Now well down from the mountaintop.