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 truck

on a highway, any highway, this could be Mexico,

this could be Guatemala, nevertheless

and regardless, it’s a damned big fish.  You dream

the fish floating but upright, not exerting its gills,

not attempting to fly, eyes the color of pennies

and 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 window

where the sun slides in between the branches of

the 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 was

silver as a truck and big, coins for its eyes,

that cauterized quality of dignity, and you said

you 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.