many night my dreaming
works hard as therapist to me,
a therapist who deals with the anxieties
that hard boil within me,
during the day my conscious self
is a tight-fitting lid over the churning
that I can ignore while in the sun,
as I drop off to sleep
I almost expect to be warned,
like before a movie,
that “mature content” follows,
not for the faint-hearted,
dream after dream then reels away:
I can’t find our car,
I can’t find Joan,
I can’t find the way home,
I can’t get the cell phone to help,
bears challenge me and my control,
I can’t get to school on time,
I can’t find a shirt
or get the shower done on time,
other dreams have me creating order as best I can:
getting the horseshoe to fly just right,
the pattern completing,
a repetition of working and reworking for order,
during the day, tears are close to my surface,
often releasing when I think of others
making moves to show they care,
other times the sorrow of loss
and of people choosing to follow their devils,
and not their better angels,
pull sobs out of me for awhile,
our country, and our psyches, are stressed
with a potentially deadly virus
and frightening incompetence and malevolence in the presidency,
when he was elected in 2016,
I could only fall asleep that night consciously choosing optimism and hope,
despite our over 400 years of systemic racism,
and the ease with which we slip into tribalism and self-indulgence,
I believe we are redeemable,
and that we can transcend the baseness that pulls at us,
I want the upcoming movie to end
as does “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
by Henry H. Walker
July 13, ‘20
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