Two Academics When the Lights Go Out

The moment the dream clock strikes midnight

The professor with a black patch over his right eye

Is deep into Southern gothic in a Mississippi delta

Populated with all manner of grotesques, Flannery O’Connor

Style, with some pimply-faced kid leading the charge

For a Church of Christ without Christ, a demon fancy

Driven by a mother complex that is in full view

Only when the kid plucks his eyes out

And grace descends on this bible belted place

Like an anxious plague in dizzy retreat.

Thus, the professor spoke and the heavens

Might have listened to his oration

That seemed to float without compass

Or purpose, like a god in hiding.

-

I am in a different venue under the heavens

Or in a planetarian with stars and planets

Perhaps hung by hand or imbedded

By wandering ancients, limbs masquerading

As compass and geometry, finding permanence

In what would become the North Star

And love in what we would later

Christen as Venus and now the dream

Stretches the poles, layering a bleak

Earth with lines of latitude and longitude

Like battling swords in deep space

Dripping blood through vacant epochs

Coating planet earth

In colors of its own making.

-

The dream now places me with the professor

In a rough-hewn, large stone building

Without doors, windows or light.

I said: “We can no longer proceed in the dark.”

I find a switch and turn it on

But the lights flicker, as if a warning

A flashing light signal from another life.

Then a child runs right into my line of vision

Speaking a joyful language that I couldn’t understand.

As I reached down to greet him, a woman intervened

Apologized, and as she was taking the child away

I said: “I love children” and the lights came on

And weight seemed to be lifted from me

As I emerge from the dream space

Well-fed on theater and compensation.