Don’t Read This Poem (An Invitation)

Don't Read This Poem (An Invitation)

 

My daughter calls from the other room; she's found a family dead.

All dead, all but one small baby hidden among the bedding.  A family

is dead in my room too, leaving another orphaned baby.

 

Don't read this poem.  My teachers told me, don't say that.

Don't mention you're writing a poem.  As if the reader,

dear reader, won't notice.  And don't say anything weird.

 

Over the top , they would say.  There are rules in poetry.

I always seem to break them.  Perhaps I also shouldn't mention

that I am writing this on red

 

paper.   Blood red.  What I picked from the scrap bin, coincidence

or synchronicity.  By the time you see this, though, the red

will have turned to white the way a face loses its color in death.

 

Two families dead, two orphaned babies.  But they aren't people.

We're in the animal-care rooms in the museum's basement.

The babies are mice, one tan, one maroon, both just starting

 

on the first hint of hair, eyes sealed shut.  Orphaned.

Of course, they will die without their mothers; we all know that.

They're not weaned.  But I am, so why the fuss?  

 

Okay, I'm an orphan.  But, I'm also a mother.  I put the babies

in my blouse to nurse from my own breasts.  Could you just not

read this?  I know you'll disapprove, but that's what I did.

 

It's sort of circular, really, since I'm the orphan now.

But I'm sixty, my parents both dead at eighty-three.   No infant, I.

In the dream, the babies grow to the size and shape of ferrets

 

and move inside my silk blouse like snakes, undulating, sinuous.

In my black velvet skirt and blood-red jacket, I hide myself

from everyone so these babies can nurse and live.

 

I am the orphan baby.  I am the snake maiden, I am the mother,

I am the grandmother.  I am as tiny as a newborn mouse

and I am the crone slipping into the grave. 

 

But you knew all that already, and knew the dual nature

of my Geminian twins, the yin and yang of me.  Even,

perhaps, the strange depths to which I'd sink to survive this grief.

 

But did you remember that you had a breast and milk

you could offer an orphan?  If you've gotten this far,

you could hold me.

 

 

Mary Stebbins Taitt

070206c, 1^st Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Here is the original dream:

Nursing Orphans and Outside Approval, Dream Sunday, February 04, 2007

 

Sara and I are in animal care and discover that in two cages of mice in two separate rooms, the mother mouse and all the babies but one (each) are dead.  She discovers one in one room and I discover the other in the other room.   The babies are very small.  They've just begun growing hair.  One is yellowish tan and the other sort of maroon-colored.  I take them into my blouse to nurse them at my own breasts so that they won't die.

 

The scene cuts to a huge science fair.  I am the head judge or some other very important person.  I am wearing a wine-colored velvet jacket, a long black velvet skirt and a wine & black silk blouse.   The baby mice have grown to the size and shape of young ferrets and are living inside my blouse, not weaned yet.  They move sinuously, bulging the blouse oddly.  I worry about offending people with the snake-like babies nursing inside my beautiful clothes.   I worry about it so much that I find a private place to sit, assist the babies in their nursing, and worry about what I should do.

 

 

This is the second dream in two nights that involve nurturing young of other species.

 

The dream poem I wrote yesterday was made of dreams from two different night—the monkey dream and rose petal dream were originally two separate dreams.

 

I don't see much potential in this dream for a poem.   If the monkey dream was weird, this one is weirder and more "unacceptable." 


--
Also Posted by Mary Stebbins Taitt to DreamlitG at 2/06/2007 10:54:20 AM and to Half-formed.  I wanted to post it HERE, but kept doing it in the wrong place, DUH!  Sorry!  If you read all my blogs (fat chance), I apologize for the repetition!

Rose Petals and Snowflakes

At the edge of the woods, I call my monkey.

Stand and call, without much hope. It’s not a pretty

woods, not a forest you’d see in a painting

full of repeating tree trunks and slants of light.

It’s a tangled mess, impenetrable.

And it’s winter. Snow lies over the ground

and on the branches of every twig and vine.

It’s been months since Mr. Grim went missing

and I think, “what could a monkey find to eat

out there in winter? There’s nothing.”

But I stand and call, not even loudly, since it seems

so hopeless. Just a plaintive cry, more like a child

calling for her mother, more like I was the one lost

and not the monkey. But then, there he is,

scampering through the woods, leaping up into my arms.

He’s disheveled, hair mussed and full of twigs and snowflakes.

He’s grown. He’s the size of a child, the size I was

at the time I first remember my mother pulling petals

from a faded rose, tossing them high into the air

and letting them fall around me, cascading, twisting

back and forth like pink geese landing on a clear blue pond.

Not tepid pink—fuchsia, hot saturated pink. And remember

how much bluer the skies were then? So deeply, serenely blue.

A blue that could swallow us, and often did.

Not the faded skies the politicians give us now, full of ozone

and acid rain. I walk back toward home carrying Grim

on my hip, his small arms around my neck, his hands

clutching me. We stop to pull tiny rose petals

from tiny white roses and toss up four handfuls. They flutter

down among snowflakes against a sky lost in a blizzard white.

When I wake up and don’t have Grim, I’m confused.

I think I have to hurry home where Mr. Grim is still lost

and rescue him from the woods. It’s a while before I’m awake

enough to realize he’s gone. Grim’s dead; my mother’s dead.

And there are no white roses blooming in this winter’s snow.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

For Margaret and Grim

1^st: Saturday, February 03, 2007

070203e

p365-07P