I Dreamt of Larry Summers . . .

Dreams do what they want.  Last night I dreamt of Larry Summers, Director of the President's National Economic Council.  Summers was choosing a bride and I was in the running, though I hadn't entered the contest. He chose another poet, who will remain nameless.

Larry--I may call him by his first name now that he's entered my dreams--drew me aside.  "I would have chosen you," he said, "if you weren't wearing that army jacket."  "But I've had it since 1957," I said, meaning I wasn't going to give up my ideals.  Those of us who wore army surplus were against the establishment.    

I wore that jacket all through the sixties.  It was the warmest jacket I ever owned, light weight, dark khaki.  I'd never betray it.

Breaking Out

"Damn braces," wrote poet William Blake.  These plants seem to be following his advice.  Tree roots break out of concrete constraints; strangler fig roots escape through an iron fence; a poinciana tree pushes through a ficus hedge. 

They have more force than I could summon at three o'clock this morning when I found myself in a tedious dream in which I would be graded for a course I never took, until I said--in my dream--"But I have a Ph.D."  Blake also wrote: "If the doors of perception were cleansed, all things would appear infinite."  I'm not sure about seeing the infinite, but perception is clearer in daylight. In sunlight I'm not confined by stale dreams.  I can walk out of our condo and every few steps find boundary-crossers like those plants, and though a sign commanded, "Limpie su mierda, la gente camina aqui," the dogs were not obeying.