The Visitor

The old dream gave way to the new dream,
because the new dream grew up and grew out,
and waited at the window black against the sky,
like branches of an oak.

The old dream didn’t end or crumble into wrinkles.
It simply slipped into darkness and found another home.

Each of us are containers of dreams for a time
visited by them, shadows,
background music, houseguests
hovering where the ceiling meets the wall,
painting at the edges of our lives.

We are reluctant hosts:
don’t interrupt my plans, my certainty
don’t ask that of me
don’t upend the teacups
don’t open that window to the wind
don’t make me crack the fear in my back
like that.

Most of us live with the hoverers like this,
turning over our shoulders, again and again, saying:
You again? Still hovering?
Not moving on yet?
Can I sweep you out with a broom?

Sauce bubbling on the stove
and teenagers at the table
and damp socks and the dog passing through
and then you: otherworldly thing,
asking, whispering, planting seeds —

I keep watch on you, and you on me.
I’m not sure how to bring you down to the floor.
There’s no braiding you in, or “incorporating” you,
For you would lead me out of this house
to a violet moon and black stars.

Maybe in the end, all the rest will be erased
All the parent meetings and the arguments and the noble gatherings at the table

Maybe all of that will be erased
and my life will be recorded as a dialogue with you.

Maybe the rest is a theater of noise,
and this conversation I can barely name
will come forth in ink, the real story of my life.

And maybe we were dancing elsewhere, even as I stirred soup on the stove.
Maybe I also lived under the violet moon.

I never thought I was only located here.
And how I suffered, when I thought I was.

– Tara Mohr

photo credit: Ganapathy Kumar