Esther Altshul Helfgott: Poems

Driving Home from Mother's House Sister Father's Skull  At Sixteen  Dream  The Old Woman  If I Could Stop the Words  At the Hospital  The Psychiatrist and the Poet Dear Pat

DREAM

I awaken this morning feeling scared. My fingers hurt. This has something to do with the dream I experienced last night. I am walking in an urban neighborhood somewhere, not the pristine one where I live now, but in my childhood neighborhood in Baltimore. I am walking along Park Heights Avenue, the street where I live. I can feel the cement against my feet. The cement is hot, so it should be summer; but I have a warm jacket on. A sweet slender dog about the size of my German Shepherd, Daphne, walks alongside me. I am looking straight ahead, determined to get to where I am going, determined to shut out the noise around me, from inside my family, from the hustle and bustle of the fruit and vegetable stands on either side of Park Heights Avenue, an arterial that runs I-don't-know-how-many miles north and south through Northwest Baltimore. Jewish Baltimore, where I have lived all my life.

I am walking quickly, not only because I want to get to the next block and the next and the next but because the dog walking waist high beside me is gnarling on two fingers of my left hand. His teeth are embedded in my skin, but she is smiling. (The dog is both male and female). I don't know if my fingers are hurting or not, but I grab the dog's snout with my right hand and try to pull her and him off me. To no avail. The dog is as determined to stick with me as I am determined to get to where I am going. In the next scenario, I am in a therapist's office. As I walk into the room, the therapist looks quizzically at my swollen fingers. He says nothing. I say nothing. My body is filled with confusion. The dog is no longer with me.
I awaken.
 

"Dream," was originally published in The Dakota House Journal,  Issue #2, Roots, May-June 2001

Driving Home from Mother's House Sister Father's Skull  At Sixteen  Dream  The Old Woman  If I Could Stop the Words  At the Hospital  The Psychiatrist and the Poet Dear Pat

Esther Altshul Helfgott is a poet and independent scholar working on a biography of Edith Buxbaum. She earned her Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington with a thesis on the politics and poetry of Holocaust poet, Irena Klepfisz. Esther's poems and articles have appeared in numerous periodicals, and she is the author of The Homeless One: A Poem in Many Voices (Kota Press, 2000). In her work as a writing teacher, Esther helps poets and writers bring their authentic voices to the page. She can be reached at: eahelfgott2@comcast.net 
 Esther Altshul Helfgott's Home Page
Esther Altshul Helfgott's neue Website >THE EDITH BUXBAUM JOURNAL<