Was it dream or nightmare—
that scene wrapped in dark, fetid vapor?

My feet in gluey mud
were stuck in dinosaur tracks
Why dinosaurs?
Why not bears?
or even more romantic... tiger paws?

A gray filigree veil blurs my sight.

Silhouetted against the orange-brown dusk
a leafless tree
with two great arms
reaching up in a why
as if in desperate prayer.
Its left hand ablaze
and in the right
hung a bucket banded in brass
spouting swirls of violin voices.
Mothers' cries and a child-choir
rise from its round lip
but from its throat horns so loud and deep
I feared tumbling into their abyss.

The great gnarled roots of that tree
frowned their sinewy scowl
determined in their depression
to obstruct my path
drawing from the dank pool
of my fear
leaches and rot
from my conflicted past.

But the glow of my mind
lit the rutted lane
arresting the talk within
that had been so comforting before.

Dare I linger here
to touch the wounds
find the sticky pride
hear the language lashing me
to my story?

I embraced the sting
of that grainy knowing
and looking up
I saw a fountain of sparks
feathered beyond the tree
brilliant with joy
against the inky sky.

I flew on epiphany-wings
to the flaming branch
and grasped it
and made it tender
for the good news
of my resurrection from the dread.

Angels beat a reveling rhythm
on great membranes of hope
in the hoop of the night
and I leapt across that awful gap
grabbed the bucket
from the right hand of the tree
and settled to the earth,
peered in
and saw my treasure.

I plucked from it
the shiny ebony of shame
the bayou brown of my mother's soul
the tight bands of my religion
the emerald awakenings
the roses of loving moments
and the sweet perfume of Spirit.

Every once in a while
I find the courage and the time
to peer into that brass-banded bucket.

Oh! If I could strip the darkness
and empty the pain
how clean it would be!

But I discover dismayed
but delighted...

It has no bottom.

09/20/2007

Author's Note: I swore I wouldn't write author's notes anymore, fearing I would insult you with explanations. But, for some reason, this seems appropriate now. Highly symbolic, this one came from a dream back in January. I realized as I wrote that it that it was really about conflict. I was about to teach a Conflict Dynamics course for the first time and felt unsure of myself, and here come all these images. Some of it is surely about my family of origin, but a lot of it is about the way I have been emerging from a fear and avoidance of conflict to an increasing ability to embrace it as a creative source and force. I hope this helps a bit, but I am still not sure about the meaning of all of it.

Posted on 09/20/2007
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