Dream Vision of Theodore Roethke
door to heaven? portal of wheres in a modern mound. to be skinned alive and dolled in moss (spongy and yellowish like sheet cake) would be ideal; desecration in reverse. the soil is shut-eye dark, no matter. once the dirge of scattered wetness ends, the roots go from sinew to delicate,—untangle and plummet with gravitational urge to the Snail Domain; they carry truth on their backs. is this where the old florist lives in his tendrilous shoes? why are graves so darn slippery? who is it that said to me: die? I’m looking for mother mildew, father fear. the fat slug cried, you have to take a little responsibility, dear. pipe-knock, fish nerves. lulled by the verve of sibilance and fricative, the fungi’s ennui. lolled into root cellar’s labyrinth of parsnips, beets, a general malaise,—oh lull me, lull me into a biscuit smeared with perverse preserves: my soul was not spotless, but I knew the sadness of rutabaga. a bulb-shaped loneliness that waited for you, fermented in the rank ditch under barometric pressure. this is my hard time. crude weather accumulates in the bones. creaking, cracking, finally veering to breathless green,—oh hothouse: cannas, orchids steaming up the glass on a winter night. I’m a fiddleheaded epiphyte of Dyker Heights. this way! this way! imitation, conscious imitation in the Kingdom of Soft-Sighs. are you my lost pearl? will you teach me how to study the lives on a leaf? tether me to your glass womb under the germinal moon; I will wait
