This morning, just after I woke up and just before I admitted that fact to the world, I daydream fantasized a poem. I was in an old house, but it was light and airy. Big wooden windows opened by breaking a paint seal. Dust motes swimming, diving and rising as the calico’s tail creates a stir from the sill. Hardwood floors. High ceilings. Mismatched furniture. Desk from a yard sale. Couch handed down from somebody I don’t remember. Plastic crates stolen from Purity Dairy holding books, tapes, . . . actual albums.
I see it, hear it, taste it. I remember it so well, and yet it is no specific place I have ever been. Rather, this is the vision that remains from long ago feelings.
It’s a rental. Upstairs a struggling musician lives with his girlfriend. He’s a bass player, thank god, not a drummer. The back screen door has a wire coil pulling it shut. Back porch a slab of concrete with four steps down to the yard, a patchwork quilt of grass, weeds, and bare earth. Grass has a hard time growing under the constant shade of such big old trees.
I feel it. It is a house of youthful hope and ancient desire. It holds a memory of simplicity unappreciated in its time. It was a place I think I might have been once in the 80s.
When the feeling has been explored, my poet’s mind begins to consider structure and rhythm. I anticipate the writing by combining words and rolling them around in my mouth awhile like analyzing a vintage Cabernet.
The last line might be, “How could I ever want more?”
Then, finally, I rise from my bed, abandon my theta state wet dream, and turn once again to the world of work and worry.
Deb Moore 