HERA'S EYES



                                                1963 etching by Salvador Dali
First published in "Like A Woman Falling" ©2004, the following poem, inspired by a dream, is based upon the myth of IO as told by Ovid in "Metamorphoses".

IN A DREAM SHE LAY STILL

inside what she couldn't see one thousand eyed in two or three

the egg hatched when the eagle maid

in black, remade in gold...

Last night She dreamt an alchemy, She dreamt

neither me nor mine. She dreamt

herself and when that died

She left her eyes behind. He said

This forest burns

burns high in the heavens, see

every tree is blackened

to its tips. He said

Pick that up

and so, someone leaned over the edge and reached

high in the heavens low

and picked from the tallest tips of the blackened pines

someone looking just like me pitched out

and thus drew in two boughs, two boughs, both dead

one black, one gold, one ash and one

whose blossoming did hold. They are dead

someone looking just like me then said.

He said, "Separate them!" And, I did, while he went on

and on and on―an on-to-say, a story. The fires de-story

everything tis true, as this fire, this terrific fire did you

but look what you now hold. Downwardlooking

I lifted two boughs, both were dead

once.

He said

Separation changes things. Now that you know this
you will, too. Now you must get away quickly...

(is this a quickening a-go?) Go!

Get away with this saying-thing! And so

I jumped into a heap between two gents

a father and a son. What a mess!

that leap, this heap, these men

the son was driving

(too close to the edge)

the father's face kept changing―he had three!

(none of which I liked) but, that

didn't stop me from interacting

and all the while we were climbing.

And, we kept climbing, up a slippery slope

conforming to its curl, the dash tilting such

that water kept flowing toward us while curving

to the dash. The son was driving

on the outside where the three of us sat...

and the cab began leaking...from the in-side out.

Everything's a mess, I thought, yet,

is adhering so. The boy

reached out and slurped a sliding slip of a sip

from the dash. It was a mad dash! Such a bad water

a mad-lad, sad-bad water!

Turns out dad hauls manure.

(It was his truck the boy was driving.)

"Are you sure he knows how," I asked

just as we parked.

I got out as quick as I could

parked like we were on that iffy cliff

cleft with crevices and rocks and a high house

built upon stone. Some folks were home

a girlfriend I knew came out

we rushed into each other's arms

and each other's laughter. Oh, the things

you have been saying, she said.

I know. Don't you love it, the things I say?

They want to know how on earth

you do it, get away with that say. They want

to learn those sayings, too. I said

Oh, that is simple

then I showed them all. You let IT

form the picture. You let IT do the work.

Let it as IT, and IT will let you.

It opened then in the work they were

working on them. All the right colors bled, too

in the one I drew, which I used in example

I let the paint do its own painting, I said.

Then we watched and we saw that the paint did.

IT showed up and showed through and showed

quite a show―My! All those eyes!

Which formed into forms that died dry

in a day scene. But, just before they did...

in the center of the seen a black thing formed

and it began to grow

and this black thing formed into a bird

a bird in flight rising from a

red, red sorry sort of spot

surrounded in a circularity of gold

from where it hatched.

Seems eggs hatch when we

return a story.

And so, no body's sorry

about jumping into that

truckload of sh-sh...stuff

nor about exposing people

to all those black things bleeding

through their own red-dead, dead red

sorry messes

nor about

messin' with those guys...even though

(somebody still thinks that driver needs lessons)


Hera's Eyes, stephanie pope from  "Like A Woman Falling" ©2004