Private as a Room: A Poem

In the midst of a swirl of karmic kindness, I have returned to a novel I left standing last April, this one for adults.  Once this novel told the story a poet, and poems advanced the plot. 



If a poet now no longer stands at the center of the book, her poems (which I suppose are my poems) remain.  Here is one.







Private as a Room

You dream a silver fish big as a truckon a highway, any highway, this could be Mexico,this could be Guatemala, neverthelessand regardless, it's a damned big fish.  You dreamthe fish floating but upright, not exerting its gills,not attempting to fly, eyes the color of penniesand wide, and the highway you dream is not a highway but a river in reversals,running the wrong way toward the sky.

You tell me this in the morning, in winter, by the windowwhere the sun slides in between the branches ofthe red bird's tree, and you might as well be speaking of the Apian Way, or the color white in Mykonos, or that pool of light you photographed in the cathedral instead of the instructions of the priest.  For you had seen this fish, and it wassilver as a truck and big, coins for its eyes,that cauterized quality of dignity, and you saidyou thought you dreamed:  This is my gift to you —

this fish, that river, their sky, in the same way you once said, Marry me on Samson Street, in winter.  It was cold then, too, I remember, and the road was a thick slick of ice and the street was as private as a room, and there was nothing in your hands but my hand, nothing in our pockets but time.And yes, I'll marry you.