A poem for 2022, "But that was twenty years ago, Auntie"

Eating, dreaming, 2021

Here is a new poem about pandemic for the first month of 2022, taken directly from a recent dream sequence. Set in the future, in another body, on another continent, I think we'll all have this moment one day in the years to come, PTSD on a global level.

This dream seemed real enough to want to write it down and share it. I'm still here writing, and I hope you are doing something you love, too. Poetry is always my way to get at the heart of something true, so I hope you can relate.

Please enjoy my dream poem: But that was twenty years ago, Auntie 

I.

This dream, the evening, will occur
twenty years from now.

We sit among the others,
place our body, this body,
(grey we are, old women,
creped and thin, still fine hands
and your beautiful eyes,
hair together down to our thighs).

You set our body in its seat
among the audience,
and we all agree to keep breathing in time,
to maintain decorum,
we aver to the general notion
of filling our lungs,
to allow light and form in at the eyes,
to interpret image and pattern
that concur: a play is performed
for our pleasure.

This is gathering,
this is an agreed-upon,
acceptable evening out,
this sitting and breathing in,
we generally recognize the story
and context while hearts beat
around us,
filling each warren of darkness.

And we know, suddenly,
that this should not be!
There is something terrible about this!

This being together.
This is what they have told us not to do!
Why are there humans everywhere?
The boy beside us is too close!
Another in front! Another behind!
We could touch them. Breathe into each.
This cannot be, this them, this me.

We are death to one another.

"Why aren’t we all wearing masks!”

I think this is our voice which has yelled.
There is silence;
the actors stop and look up.
The night turns around, all eyes
upon us,
flickering across our open mouth,
our startled cry.

The boy beside us gently says
that he is our nephew.
What is nephew? We see only eyes.
He lays a plump, blood-stormed
hand upon our arm, kind:

“But that was twenty years ago, Auntie.”

II.

This moment you have dreamed me,
will not be wasted
on the day that it happens.

Our terror in the audience,
our fear at such intimacy,
too much breath
to endure, or protect.

We will know each other
across the crowd:
the flare of memory
will flood us,
dream and breath connect.
But it will be you knocking,
insistent
and loud.

PD/January 2022

Here's pundit Chuck Wendig on "Writer's Resolutions 2022: The Necessary Act of Selfishly Seeking Joy"

Enjoy my December 2021 short piece, The Time Twin on CBC Books

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