DREAMING
The ones we talk about or ache to recall
the morning after, we call nightmares.
A love-sick, maudlin, slobbering goodbye
in the tight-pillow-hug tearjerker dream?
It was not a dream. It is a stifled desire,
a constipation “devoutly to be wished”.
Shrinks shrank these into Freudian blots
on the balance sheets of love and hate:
You want to run as wildly far away as you
could, id permitting, haunches allowing.
One needy life is enough torment; free
yourself then from this strangled trellis,
where hanging like a wanton leaf is not
the twin of hanging on but dangling still
until hurts can no longer wound you,
nor gentle caress save you. You are a stone.
No fall can sever you from tangled vines
that summer burns, nor frost cripple you;
you would not even pray for the spring
to bring sunrises and sunsets to heal you.
Open your eyes and dream that loneliness
becomes you; you are strong and alone,
omni soli, semper. Will courage redeem
you then from the stupidity of being brave
and alone? And when you sleep, will you
remember to open your eyes and dream?
--- Albert B. Casuga
12-15-11
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