Drips of Sulfur
The dream drips a noir trap
Smells sulfuric
Disintegrating when I wake.
An entourage kidnapped me
Questioned my creative identity.
A suave, refined, heavy intellect, testing in a gaze.
In the morning, I sauna in the sun's rays
With dog and daughter in the dining room.
I have until 1:00 pm when I lose the deep frame of heat.
6 months to go until the official
Freshman year dorm move-in for my twins.
I have Cixious in my hands and open to page 8.
“Once blood is split in the dust
It doesn’t return to the veins”.
I do know they will never return intact.
I ask twin A to do yoga with me in the Nagasaki bright sunroom
A loud burn of white heat, moving time, and being still
reflecting sharp crystallized snow everywhere at once.
She takes my phone to order her meds.
And reminds me to do our nails together later.
The neighbors on each side of our house
Shovel their driveway. I note to refill the bird feeder.
A lonesome cardinal striking a proud, puffed chest
Flicks off a large snow bank that lands on its back
Balancing cold, hunger, and nonplus as it tilts to flight.
Cixious is opened again:
‘She had fallen into a state of farewell”.
This grief of a constant farewell state
calls to pull out the childhood albums.
A favorite is a photo of a bug-collecting mission
Container grasped. Tiny people prodding in ponder.
A background of green, another country of time.
Am I guilty of Sontag’s notion of imaginary possession?
I remember capturing the moment specifically to be sure
to show them childhood in action when they are older.
I move to the south-facing window of the house
For another deep heat-up.
Not sure how or when the pain melts.
The sun-sweating sessions in February
Are now a regular practice,
A preparation, a cleanse.
I drop gratefully at 3:00 pm into the
6’x 3’ rectangle of intense sun.
The rest of the house is behind a veil denying me.
Yes, I constantly see myself dockside waving goodbye
as they fly away in a flotilla of sails,
leaving me as an apparition.
Dreams of kidnapping make sense.
The noir foreshadows artistic coconspirators,
Migrating with me out of winter shade grief.
Once the sulfur fume is released
It never returns intact
removed.