The Dream World Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  ALONE IN THE WOODS FOR THE REST OF THE WINTER

  The Hinterland

  Full Moon: Reading “The Lost Letters of Heloise and Abelard”

  The Future

  Alone in the Woods for the Rest of the Winter

  The In-Breath

  Unsung

  Chasing the Good Life

  Disclosure

  Seeing Is Believing

  Departure

  Leaving for the Arctic, Listening to My Lover Sing the Blues

  IF ONLY A HOUSE STOOD JUST FOR ITSELF

  House-Hunting: 92 Freshwater Road

  House-Hunting: 202 Topsail Road

  House-Hunting: 81 Sycamore Street

  Wanderlust

  Making an Offer

  Anxiety Dreams

  Telepathy: Living Across from the Church

  Robin

  Ascent

  Writing Poetry

  The Here and Now

  Acquainted with the Night

  Dog-Eared

  TALKING OR NOT TALKING

  Scrabble

  The Other Side of the Coin

  Thank You for Not Smoking

  Touch and Go

  The Metamorphoses’ Metamorphosis

  Language Travelogue

  Winter Landscape: Reading Gertrude Stein

  Silhouette

  Deontology

  Raphael Hythloday Arrives from Utopia

  Talking

  Not Talking

  THE DREAM WORLD

  Natural Selection

  The Maps of the Labrador Arrive

  Poor Me

  Ethics

  Aesthetics

  Gone Fishing

  The Out-Breath

  Childhood

  The Cosmos: Reading Lacan

  Prints

  The Crossing

  Study for Mortality: Charcoal on Paper

  Premonition

  The Dream World

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Alison Pick

  Copyright

  When at last they awoke, it was already dark night. Gretel began to cry and said: “How are we to get out of the forest now?” But Hansel comforted her and said: “Just wait a little, until the moon has risen, and then we will find the way.”

  – THE BROTHERS GRIMM

  The dream is the small hidden door…

  – C.G. JUNG

  ALONE IN THE WOODS FOR THE REST OF THE WINTER

  THE HINTERLAND

  I walk as far as I can,

  then farther, past

  the chain-link barring the road,

  tire tracks deep as the rut in my thinking,

  the place I always get stuck.

  Wanting more, or wanting

  less, to be rid of the word

  called wanting. Boulders,

  tall grass, shrubs I can’t name,

  birds I can’t name, the ocean.

  Being a stranger sneaks me through the latch

  of language – briefly. Bottles, I know.

  Condoms, I know. And the weight

  of being human where other humans have been.

  Back of the sea like one line of thought,

  slight variation of foam at the shore

  where artifice gives itself up. Farther out,

  a ledge in the rock

  as though attention might help. Turning

  for home, hands in my pockets, night mists

  like animal breath, the black-brown shapes

  of gathering mammals

  bending to drink at the silent pool

  of mind submerged in mind.

  If a gap exists at all, it’s there

  I might have slipped through.

  FULL MOON: Reading “The Lost Letters of Heloise and Abelard”

  A portal. A circular door to forever,

  rebirth – a hole to crawl through

  leaving failure behind. Call the place we land in

  heaven, although it’s dark: the moon does not shine without the sun. The two-faced sky

  sees both sides, its single eye

  trained on absence: words not said,

  the back of a mirror, the stars’ mirror-image

  held on the sea. We paddle through

  our own reflections, moon above, a watery

  gate. The shape of you, the shape

  of me. That infinite distance to cross.

  THE FUTURE

  I dress for fate: my plastic

  pearls, my heels bejewelled

  for dancing. You wear a cloak

  of stars and moons and gloves

  sewn out of satin. The party’s

  dark, which hinders my chances,

  my hope that our orbits collide.

  A smoky wind blows in off the terrace,

  blocks the view of what-comes-next,

  the way the dealer’s poker face

  obscures the future’s features.

  He looks at us blandly and shuffles

  the years. Everyone’s drunk.

  Everyone’s gambling. We choose

  another game and form a ring that stands

  for time. We sit on the floor, cross-legged.

  I catch your eye across from mine.

  Set the bottle spinning.

  ALONE IN THE WOODS FOR THE REST OF THE WINTER

  I wake and the fire in the woodstove’s gone out.

  The valley filling with snow. Branches lift

  slender arms to pull on lambswool sweaters.

  I stand in the kitchen in bare feet and long johns,

  nudging the ashes low in the grate. Something flares:

  the thought of the man at the party who called me

  lovely – I couldn’t help blushing, turning away.

  This morning is long with coffee and reading,

  snow sifting silently down – the window spotlights

  fat flakes falling, slow and bright

  as comets. Maples gleam, spruce trees gleam,

  the river’s throat is collared with ice. The gravel road

  disappears altogether. Staying strangers keeps the spark

  of mystery alight. Alone in the woods for the rest

  of the winter – my heart glinting bright in the ash.

  THE IN-BREATH

  Here’s the other side of waiting:

  what you don’t write writes you.

  How about silence, late in the season,

  holding its tongue in its teeth; drawing

  you like ink through a pen. Meanwhile winter

  shies up the path, one girl arriving

  at the boys’ party, present of paradox

  tied with a bow concealed

  behind her back. The sky becomes one

  with its clouds, the waves with their mist.

  Even when narrative flings itself free

  a net of meaning holds.

  UNSUNG

  Candid light forsakes the cliff. Balsamic moon, tight-lipped.

  You want to go to the land to learn as Simone Weil went

  to the factory – you want more than gesture, but only kneeling

  lowers you down to silence’s field, the nave furred over

  with inches of snow. Several prayer books down from breath,

  the hymn of particular language. You are there with ten thousand

  words, your mouth a leaky cup. Every offering flawed, flawed –

  still you fear giving them up. You fear the sin of speech minus

  listening, listening with only the ears: a wilder hush

  of wind through grass, land brushing out her long hair. Goldenrod,

  cattails down the back path. Later the ocean like unstudied Latin.
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  You’ll need to stay much longer than planned, to hold your tongue

  in your palm; to wait in the unsung blue-black of dusk

  before writing anything down. Your driftwood heart so quick

  to ignite – huddle around its thin flicker. Light-years back,

  the house of language, one round window lit – it’s time to turn

  your back on home. Time to begin the long translation.

  CHASING THE GOOD LIFE

  The skinny slick of fame dries up and leaves a sweet relief –

  head to the valley and sit by the fall of the stream getting over itself.

  The other shore’s close, but walled off by water. You’re after

  a glimpse, a brief apparition of nowhere and nothing that humbles

  you down. Squint ahead: a shape in the aspen shucks the form

  of doe or moose; it scales the ridge of memory’s shadow, swiftly

  disappearing. Force yourself to stay cross-legged, night spilling ink

  through the grass. A chill settles over your arms. Something makes

  its presence known like piano-notes moving through a dark church –

  a single hand travelling, slow, up the keys. Silence right after,

  the deafening kind, the water’s mind gone still. A tail

  breaks the surface. Thought ripples out. Sit until blackness

  fills all the blanks – the far shore ripped out like a stitch.

  DISCLOSURE

  If it were only a matter

  of looking. If the gaze

  could raise its object

  high in the air like a player

  preparing to slap the puck

  into the back of, right

  in the nick of, into the net of

  time. Things end. Things

  peel back to show themselves

  as clothing falls to show

  the skin, the body’s one-way

  glass concealing what

  it won’t allow –

  the gut’s vague hunch;

  the spleen, both kinds,

  especially sadness. Open,

  I face you, watch your eyes

  take in my heart’s two eyes,

  one blind. The double edge

  of lust divides. You see.

  You see right through me.

  SEEING IS BELIEVING

  The handsome doctor fills my frames

  with different lenses: better or worse?

  An answer’s required, though I’ve learned

  beauty is built in back of the brain.

  I know this in the hazy way

  I know about blood vessels, orbiting

  planets. My vision’s a blur

  of cosmic detritus. I press my face to his metal machine

  and tell him, forcefully, better. Outside,

  I blink against science’s shine. The sun lights up

  my new-found sight; the optic nerve

  plugs into my mind. God is in

  the beholder’s eye – who else could push

  that red ball of fire through the sky?

  DEPARTURE

  At midnight, the sun is a showgirl in sequins,

  too drunk to drag from the stage. Her place makes light

  of permanence – an outport town, a point

  of departure – everything poised and ready to leave,

  a disappearing act. But first the sun returns again

  for some uncalled-for curtain call, lifts anew to show

  her lustre, never having set. These float planes too,

  paused in the bay, a clutch of cockpits and silver

  crescendo, seem helium-prone, at the end of their strings,

  ready and raring to rise. But something’s wrong: a crowd

  draws close, all push and shove around the wharf. A metal bird

  lost its nerve a hundred feet above the water – hesitated –

  and, of course, in hesitating, fell. The pilot tells

  of some rogue wind that grabbed the plane and tore

  its wing, then threw it down, a small child’s toy,

  into the choppy lake. All survived: miracle?

  Testimony to the pilot’s skill? Early tomorrow this same man

  is set to fly us out. Out of where – our selves? Our skins? –

  Perhaps he’ll take us deeper into something raw

  and menacing. The fallen craft, hoisted dry, displayed

  on this unstable dock, one arm missing, sunk and gone,

  reminds us of our gamble. Were the plane a wishbone, cracked,

  we’d hold our short, unlucky half and wonder what it tells about

  our impending fate; about redemption’s starting point –

  is brokenness the only place from where we might be lifted?

  We picture ascending up through the ether, a ravel of white

  unrolling behind us, ribbon of smoke, visible mark of everywhere

  we’ve been. Is this the wish of every bride who trails a train

  down the aisle? And what about the what-comes-next;

  the plane’s stalled hover, horrible tumble, giant cosmic

  fun-fair ride, passengers screaming wide-eyed? Tomorrow

  we will rise, like them, trusting the pilot’s doubtful credentials,

  and though it’s late, we feel awake, alert to what’s ahead:

  another day when we must risk our temporary natures. Another

  way, the flight’s our calling, forecast of our final trip

  high into our human failure. Our terrible, dazzling falling.

  LEAVING FOR THE ARCTIC, LISTENING TO MY LOVER SING THE BLUES

  If it should ever happen that

  I lose my way and winter arrives,

  my heart contracting,

  thin and white, turning

  for another; or if the barrens take me up

  like history takes an unknown year

  making of me a circle of rocks

  with nothing in the centre;

  or if the light that fractures blue

  into a million rivers and ponds,

  in a final act of surrender,

  gets in my eyes and blinds me,

  wait for me at the piano.

  I will know the tips of your fingers

  softly on my inner thigh,

  your back that bends, releases, bends

  over what’s open before it.

  I will know you by your sounds –

  rough and sweet at the back of your throat –

  I will know your hard luck song

  and it will sing me home.

  IF ONLY A HOUSE STOOD JUST FOR ITSELF

  HOUSE-HUNTING: 92 Freshwater Road

  You cannot keep your eyes off

  the owner, ring through her nose, braid

  down her back like a length of rope

  you could climb. Save me. Let down

  your hair. Your words are chewed up

  in the garbage disposal she’s using

  to woo you. You need a friend.

  She calls you honey –

  it tempts you to sign. Kitchen

  features a built-in dishwasher,

  stove she is willing to leave.

  She needs to move now –

  she wants to be gone.

  You, of course, take this personally.

  Back at home the flashing red light

  is just a wrong number, a hang-up.

  You’re porous, lachrymose, social-life

  starved – but hip

  to the law of supply and demand.

  You want to buy. She wants to sell.

  Both of you human, no less.

  HOUSE-HUNTING: 202 Topsail Road

  Great house for kids, the owner says gaily,

  and stares at the flat of your stomach as though

  it will now begin rising like bread. A punch

  in the gut of intention and you’re doubled over.

  From the top floor, sunset’s view,

  your old life sink
ing too. Use the closet

  off the master to shelter the egg

  of your dream for yourself; a crack

  in the shell of your armour and longing

  weeps through. Whatever you ache for,

  this isn’t it. But your breasts start to leak

  and your hands begin searching – fuse box, cellar,

  under the sink – opening every dark hole

  of the future. Hide-and-seek, or maybe sardines,

  this is like finding four or five bodies

  crammed in the crawl space under the floor,

  the instant of fear before recognition:

  is that what you’re looking for? Is it?

  HOUSE-HUNTING: 81 Sycamore Street

  When you mention this street, no one knows its name.

  On the map it is lined in with careful grey pencil:

  it smudges beneath your wet thumb. Weeds

  in the yard. Chicken-wire fence. Step over

  razors, needles, syringes, your lover’s hand hot

  in the small of your back,

  a parent persuading a child.

  Windows stare wanly, pupils dilated –

  the front door sighs open, ready to welcome,

  slams in a sharp gust of wind.

  Inside, your eyes blink hard to adjust

  to a cliché of dust, sheets over chairs. Light bulbs

  blown out. Each door reveals another dark room,

  nesting dolls shrinking in size. This could be a study,

  says the Real Estate Man. Trying to convince you, and himself.

  You send the Real Estate Man to the car, and kiss your lover –

  his tongue is on fire. Steady wail of sirens closing in.

  House of your nightmares. House of your dreams.

  You cannot say which is stronger: desire

  to fix it up, or desire for decay.

  WANDERLUST

  Next things to learn are the routes out of town.

  Clearly, the humpback off Freshwater Bay is just

  a red herring, the width of its tail obscuring your view

  like a blindfold. So many sights you aren’t meant

  to see: squint, and the sea disappears. Nude and alone

  in the tide pool at Flatrock – a man walks by, hands

  in his pockets, swivels the compass of his face

  away from the blight of your breasts. Nothing here’s

  female. Sky: an Old Testament God. Eternal

  fog has the warden’s approval,

  unlike you with your self-absorbed lines,