Dream Doughnuts
I tell them how I read Ray’sÂ
book of poems cover to cover until he entered
my dream as through some side-door in the jazz club,
some loophole in time.
I’m so glad to see you again, I say.
He’s carrying a bag of powdered doughnuts
and two paper cups of black coffee.
Was I gone too long? he asks, fresh from the bakery.
Too long is if you don’t come back at all, I say.
Time is funny, he says, biting into the doughnut
so the hole breaks open to the entire air supply
of the planet. Powdered sugar clings to the corners
of his lips. Ghost-lips I call him, as he
tears off doughnut and feeds it to me like a small bird
who won’t eat any other way. Time,
like the doughnut hole, has rejoined itself,
as when joining breaks us open to ourselves, corollary
to again.
I say to Ray:
Did you ever think
it would be like this?
Drink your coffee, he says, while it’s hot.
For a while we’re all out there together, but soon
I know I’ll have to go back to that alcove
in which we’re always waiting to see
each other again, the one we call Life, so it has
a hole in the middle, a sign of arrival, given
so we don’t need to miss ourselves or anyone else,
we’re sure that the whole,
in some unaccountable lightning-flash-hyphenation,
goes on and on, as it takes
our very breath away.
-Tess Gallagher from Dear Ghosts
