TRANSFERENCES

When I met my mother
at the west side docks –
it was 67 years ago –
Come on! I’m still there?
Come on with me, I’m still
there,
I met my mother
at my doc’s. Tall
and graceful he
leaned over toward me, ruthless
at times, miraculously
kind. Many more than one
of a kind – a motherman,
a bus driver, a skeleton floating
just beneath the surface
of the water, an ancient
wooden dock.

And now you, a woman
in your radiant white
blouses. An exquisite
one today, embroidered with
interlocking circles of silver,
a chain of circles suggesting
infinite danger,
a thing that never ends.

You want to know about my mother?
Death is her name   a woman called Death
I said as a child smiling shouting weeping
She’s Dead, but Death is a prettier word
her name is Death. I’ll call her Death
bitterness and hunger crossing paths.

On the west coast I sailed across a sea
where I saw the Queen Mary
anchored and docked,
too old to ride the waves
again – I was far
from the west side docks
where I shouted Good Morning
Mama! Look! My new white boots!
Ocean wind and rain drowned
out my small cry but she waved.
He wavered, I hoped,
between professional discipline
and uncontrollable love, shoot
counter transference to hell, death
to the discipline that saved me.

And he drove those buses for years
in my dreams – we were always lost.
Streetcars, my father
called old Philadelphia buses,
streetcars he learned to negotiate,
like me, longing to master
a new country.
A streetcar named
Desire. My son playing
Stanley. My father jumping
on board, in his hand
an orange, tasted for the first time,
I feel the succulent juices
seeping through his fingers.

I wanted to taste you, I may
have dared to say
in a hesitant whisper wanting/
not wanting to be heard – I
want to eat you take
you inside me as I was
once inside of her, of Death,
to be inside of you Fatherman
Doctorman.

Now you’re dead like them,
and I’m afraid of wanting Death again.
Come back. Come on
with me. I’m there again,
I never called her
Mama, can only clumsily
write Mother. I write it now
hitting wrong keys.
Mama, you called her, Mama,
you persisted
insisting on the lost word,
the buried plea.

I, always too dependent
on the kindness of strangers
complied and
I lay down for you.

Make no mistake, new woman guide,
I see those old sea-rivers of guilt and rage,
and I’m afraid of falling into shadows,
ancient creatures lurking in long rotting
dismantled wooden docks.
Good morning ancient creatures,
my old dead alive again
in this new death, lost, lost again.

Come on, come on, come on
with me into shadows take
my hand this writing hand –

No, leave me be
too old to ride the seas again
the radiant white
silver striped
infinite seas.

But yes, come with me again,
boldly over ancient waving seas again,
I see it’s ancient mourning time again.