One-Eyed Dream
There's an old woman dreaming
with one eye wide
as the cricket sings
like a living summer
trapped between walls
with a tiny hammer,
a dark-air swimmer
a two-note composer
a tiring dancer
and laugher at riddles
runed on a lathing
chewed through the middle.
The old woman dreams
with one eye latched
the eidolon hand
that comes out of the past
or the black-sleeved future
laid soft on her cheek
adamant on an arm
weakening now
as the day dwindles down
to a matchlight lost
in the swirling-in dusk;
both eyes fall shut because they must.
~September 2015
posted for real toads
Images: Seated Old Woman, 1920, by M.C. Escher, fair use via wikiart.org
Old Woman Asleep, 1873. by Vincent Van Gogh, public domain
You have the knack of drawing me in, word for word, I listen to your tale.
ReplyDeleteThere is a playful lightness that contrasts so well to the subject, trapped between the lightness of the past and the darkness in the future.. the last line is especially touching..
ReplyDeleteI really dig this image: "one eye latched" - solid
ReplyDeleteThis is a most eloquent description, Hedge, an amazing portrait of inner and outer space.
ReplyDeleteBeen there.
ReplyDeletePrecise as a clock, and beautiful.
ReplyDelete"with one eye wide" "with one eye latched" A Grimm's fairy tale meets Mother Goose. Wonderful.
ReplyDeleteI am laughing at Timoteo's comment, but not at the poem. It is a very eloquent description--I don't know if it is inner and outer space--or at least for me, it is more like having a foot in two worlds--the present, which in the case of someone aging can become so minute and trivial in some ways--trivial is perhaps not the best word, but one can focus on these near-irritants, or fine details (even when not irritants)--there can be a wheedling quality about one's attention to the present--and that other mind (which I suppose is inner) that is trapped in that phantom past--and admantine black sleeve to come--I guess you say adamant--but that black sleeve is pretty insistent--a part of me reads the eidolon as eider-down and the adamant as adamantine--so there is this echoed high contrast--
ReplyDeleteI'm focusing on the last stanza in a way but the first is wonderful too--that cricket is very real but also a bit like Poe's cat. All cool, yes, eloquent--scary too--but only because quite real. k.
ps - great sound btw--lathe and latch and swirling-in--and all those near rhymes--k.
ReplyDeletei love the storybook feel to this. and, yes, the cricket:)
ReplyDeleteFor me, this was an eloquent portrait of inner and outer worlds. Your work is always so well penned--
ReplyDeleteYour poetic story is perfectly contrasted, such a vivid picture of both the dichotomy, light of the past,
ReplyDeleteand darkness of the future.
I especially loved these lines of yours:
"the eidolon hand
that comes out of the past
or the black-sleeved future"
Excellent poem.
This poem oozes a sense of in-between and of being lost... I see the woman trying to be here and there at the same time, but she doesn't like her situation. She's doing the dreaming, and will continue to do it... and that part feels like a dance. The very last line put me in mind of unwanted ends. Perhaps it's because we--and by "we" I mean "me"--rarely like doing anything because we "must".
ReplyDeleteLovely image of the cricket as a living summer!
ReplyDeleteI love the description of the cricket, and the pace of the poem which passes like one long moment into the next, but with the one telling difference.
ReplyDeleteas the day dwindles down
ReplyDeleteto a matchlight lost
in the swirling-in dusk;
both eyes fall shut because they must.
Thus ends a day in one's life and rightly so to get some shut-eye. This is plainly normal!
Hank
I am struck by the change in tense and description of the first line of each verse, as if each eye provides a slightly different perspective on the dream, a stereo, as it were.
ReplyDeletethe last lines in the first verse remind me of the line in the Beck song that made him famous:
"And my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite /
That's chokin' on the splinters".
and the last lines - well, yes, they must... ~
Lathed--latched. Really good.
ReplyDeleteYou know, its good to keep one-eye on the present and one on the future/past. Far too many keep them stuck on the ghosts of future past and present. Eidolon is such a cool word.
ReplyDeleteI feel the passage of time and its dwindling there in the end.
You teeter totter us into life's riddles part daydream, nightmare and the rawness of reality. Here our vision lingers and blurs imaging the cricket's cadence as life ripples like a tossed stone. We are reminded of life's shadows in the cricket's haunting song~ Wow, Hedge!
ReplyDelete