This is-- one of the assignments I give in my beginning poetry
writing classes is to write a "dream poem."
And they can either be poems drawn from dreams,
or they can be invented dreams.
And this poem is an invented dream called "Man in the Moon."
"In one dream the door thumps and a man
stands there like a lost clock.
He's wearing some kind of black coat
and a hat pulled so low the shadow of it
cuts his face in half.
He's got two hands though and stretched between them,
like a cat's cradle or constellation, a map.
I can hear metal snicking somewhere deep inside the coat,
maybe a lot of loose change wearing
the faces of crazy ladies on one side,
dead babies on the other--
maybe just pop cans, nails, and broken machinery.
I don't know.
I'm trying to get from here to here, says the man
and draws a finger across the map like he's gutting a fish.
This takes years.
You can't get here from here, I say back.
And anyway, don't I know you from someplace, sundry tires,
trash, and scraps of clothes wash
up along the river bank and ice spits in your eyes
all winter long?
And didn't we have us a time at that dance?
You must be mistaking me for someone the moon dreamed up,
says the man, one night it was so
blue it like to wash away on the flood tide of its own light.
You don't know beans about dreams, I say.
He folds the map up small as a gnat.
It's snatched by the wind that moans through the night,
stealing its little ones back."