New poem: "The Puzzled Psychologist"

 

The Puzzled Psychologist

 

He came to me in a dream holding

a book in his right hand that I had just

written but not yet published (his pipe

was in his other hand), and we sat for

hours (time is not the same in dreams

as here) and talked about The Way

of Soul, which was the title of my new

book that had captured his interest enough

to visit me in my dream; and the first

thing he said to me, with a look of awe

and wonder in his awake, small eyes,

was, “How in God’s name did you figure

it out?” He was old in my dream, eighty

or more, and it confounded him how one

so young and unlettered in the ancient

texts could puzzle out the mystery of life

that he was still working out. “Simple,”

I said, “if you can believe it. I was tired

of being who I was not, and I came back

to live my same life over again to become

what I was meant to be; like an acorn seed

that one day must become an oak and not

a maple, apple, or any other tree.”

 

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Georgian Bay, Ontario