It was a dream of bodies
It was a dream of your body
unlocking itself from newly risen fields
It was a dream of you
materializing from the brown limbs of your mother
It was your great head,
a white bear turning toward his north palace
Your head, a computer written before its era,
a work of fantastic connections,
a science fiction
You and your head of Easter Island stone
You and your sphinx head
commanding moving sand to protect the dead
You and your crossword puzzle,
your movie house,
your weather zones,
your electrically printed unrolling graph of notes and
numbers
It was a dream of you and your legs and your bronze feet
and the museum reproduction of them in clay,
a dream of your feet kicking their way through war rooms,
feet of pilgrimage dust,
your saints’ parade
your dancing bone-stick rhythm
And a dream of your legs and arms,
Your legs, roads home
to a mansion invaded by strangers,
your dueling pistols laid in a crimson velvet case
and locked forever in library glass
And your thighs of buckskin mouthed to soft touch by native
woman, of peasant bread warm from the oven,
of hangman’s rope
And your arms,
the hair wires plugged into flesh,
your arms like parents,
your arms, your tightening belt,
your ice crusher
And it was a dream of your eyes,
views of the earth from the moon,
ovals of Naples,
suspicions of kings,
your eyes, your centuries of silence
your screams under the water,
your secret agents
And your skin of salt sun-evaporated from waves of the Indian
Ocean, of unidentified herbs,
of 18th century perfume,
of gunpowder
And your chest, your bed of wheat, the horizon of it
A dream of your fingers
and your male finger,
your dangling medal,
your limp animal,
your mathematics of fingers and your phallus,
your stage dagger,
wishing fountain,
jackpot handle,
and balls of oranges stolen by gypsies,
oasis figs,
hanging gardens,
and your divining rod finding the hidden spring,
your time machine,
your lightning and your shattered tree,
and your fingers of kidnap candy bars
It was dreaming of it and how the mouth and tongue, a quick
fish, how the words come out in visible letters,
and the mouth
and the mountain teeth cutting snow,
cracking the spines of fallen deer,
and the tongue,
a stiff leaf stroke,
a burrowing question
A dream of plastic forming huge shapes of you
and shrinking them to nothing, a genie,
a formation of clouds dissolving,
of sections assembled and taken apart
and rebuilt, a cartoon magic, a transplant
A dream of a sacred marble statue
to which tears have been offered for generations
and tribute
and nothing damaged
A dream of a glass body trembling between liquid and solid
and breaking
It was a dream of you,
of your body,
of the bodies that are you, born and reborn,
and the longing to take you back
and give you up to life again
|||
Dolores Stewart Riccio is the author of six Circle mysteries; Spirit, a novel; several cookbooks, including the original Superfoods series; Doors to the Universe, a collection of poems; and co-author of two books about haunted houses. She and her husband, Ottone M. Riccio, author and teacher, live in Duxbury, Massachusetts.
“The Creation” was published in the TLR Issue: Fall 1975, Vol. 19.