Bob Dylan once said that if  “my thought dreams could be seen, they would probably put my head in a guillotine.” I know people who put their dreams on Facebook or better yet in group email lists meant for other purposes. Makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. If you see what I mean.

I read a poem the other day by a famous American poet. Didn’t understand damn near anything in it but for this: “If you cook like the way you walk, Chiquita, I will eat it down to the husk.” He said that right after he said that the substance of lack was the prime substance of desire. And then he mentioned that a child beggar in a South American village was looking up at him, pointing to his own mouth.

I remember my dreams. I still have them. To remind me, I suppose, of distances “which are not near,” places to which I drove myself until, for no good reason(as if there ever are “good” reasons) I was left with no choice but to leave. I now wake from my night dreams in fear of earlier guillotines and death dealing husks  choked down in doorways of imagined Mexican chapels somewhere along the way. The substance of loss is the prime substance of salvation. Providing, of course, that you can keep it down.

Photograph by Michael Lebowitz ©2012