Words the Dreamer Spoke to my Father in Maine

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Ocean light as we wake reminds us how dark

Our old house is.  That's home.  Like Hamlet,

One visit to Wittenberg is enough, and we'll soon be

Back in crazy Denmark.  I dreamt I stood

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In a machine shop; my dead father stands beside me.

We talk, but his eyes remain on my chest.

I say to him for the first him:"Oh look at me

When we talk." I could see cubbyholes

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With dark tools, and a rough floor stained with oil.

Clotted windows, cobwebs, a black vise.

But sunlight outside our windows speaks of ocean

Light, bone light, Labrador light, prairie light.

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It's the same light that glints off swords, and shines

From Idaho rivers some days, and from the thin

Face just before death. I say to my father,

"We could be there if we could lift our eyes."

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~ Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

photo by Kathleen Connally

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