PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I remember the dream, that foggy morning, quite clearly:

you and I, sir, seated at an upright piano, playing "Be My

Baby," arranged for four hands (mine the melody,

yours the basso continuo, yours the compelling

harmonies).  I woke with enthusiasm that

had been absent---banished or abandoned---since the

collapse of my existence in that year after college, 1981.

Even during that afternoon's rare event---the

annual, midwinter convocation of the

Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, with

performance of the rare Twentieth Degree (the

"George Washington")---I continued to hear in my

mind that melody, those powerful accompanying

notes and chords that you brought from your

mastery (at least in my dream) of the keyboard.

From that day, and until Thursday, May 18th of that year,

I studied your stories and tales ferociously and fanatically---

wholly unaware of the relentless psychological assault

about to be imposed upon me by Didymus the Infernal---

whose perfidious rage, both diurnal and nocturnal,

would engulf me and bring dismal storms into even the

brightest days (and nightmares that continue, even now, to

haunt me) for approximately forty-four months and twenty-four days.

Starward