Something Your Mother Gave You

SOMETHING YOUR MOTHER GAVE YOU


Where does the dream fit
inside the little box of waking?
Was it something your mother gave you
from beyond the grave, as they say,
though why would anything be there
in particular, past the iron angels
and the blunt crosses made of stone
to look like logs?

However
will you understand these pictures
you wake up with between your ears?

Daytime religions provide no explanations.
Dreams may be no more than movies–
but you show them to yourself, you made them
maybe, downloaded them from bedlam
but who knows.
And while you watch
you are no one but the watcher.

You are the night.
But now the morning
sprawls around you, houses, trucks,
the ordinary miracles of space unpacked
and you can’t quite get it yet, can’t get
to the street with your head so full of
pictures.

The world was ransacked
while you slept and all the necessary things
are missing out here now but still in you.
You walk around as if you were in a museum,
not understanding one single thing you see.


Robert Kelly

Posted over on Charlotte Mandell

from MAY DAY: Poems 2003-2005