Burt Kimmelman: Dreaming of Love

Man and Woman Reclining

after a pen-and-ink drawing in one of Fay Jones’s notebooks

In our sleep we fold ourselves over

our dreams — to hold them, protect them. At

times I see you in my dream. Do you

see me too? They are there as we lie

over them — and we are there, dreaming

the same dream. No one else dreams our dream.

They are there and we are there too. Our

eyes are closed, and if we opened them

they would be gone. Would you be gone too?

Charles Demuth’s Blue Nude, 1913

She

is all

there is

her leg

out

the knee

& blue

naked

crotch

her arm

crosses

the blank paper

She

stirs

restlessly.

Waiting for Diane at the Klee Show

If in the space

there are 2

lines, let one be

the wild happiness

the edge

measures . And if

there are faces,

we are

their round eyes,

or the hat   the foot

the finger   all the lighted

extremities

there . If

in the warm

light we must be

them, then we must

be

them. Let

the o

in oh you

mean we are

here

beyond

any form.

I Fold Myself Around You

I fold myself around you

the way the days fold themselves

around the nights. Just when we

think we will not go on much

longer we do. The moment

of life is long. People live

on. We think of them. I think

of you and you are there. You

live on. I, too, somehow, do.

The Waves

When you told me, “I’m dying — it’s

all right,” I dreamt I was treading

water in the ocean, no land

in sight, and a great ship, its sails

jutting into the night sky, was

making its slow way toward the far

horizon. The world of the dead

must be like that realm where dreams hold

the living, where we come and go,

breathing stars. If I could rouse you

from that place I would tell you how

I swam, swam to shore, exhausted,

where I hear your voice in the waves.

Burt Kimmelman lives just outside New York City with his wife, the writer Diane Simmons. He has published ten collections of poetry and eight volumes of criticism (including two monographs). He is a distinguished professor of Humanities at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Forthcoming books include Parapet: New and Selected Later Poems, and Visible at Dusk: Selected Essays, due to appear in 2021.