Everything in the Dream Is Me, Says Jung
by Mary B. Moore
The volunteer pin oak is straight
and narrow. I’m not, though
at one point, I tried.
Also unlike me, the mess
of stems is brown hair,
scared stiff—mine’s white now.
The few leaves, burnt tan,
cling: multi-lobed, hand-, person-,
and flying- bird shaped, they’re
a bit monstrous, seven armed
girls, five-winged birds.
I am a bit monstrous—
I won’t say how—
and the oak too, a letter I
fifty limbs cross. Imagine
the fifty-armed god I
could crucify.
I can’t be the sun: oak-rider,
white-hot eye whose sight I
cannot bear to see.
You see, as a girl
I immersed myself in the lure
of the unburning
fire I and Moses
thought was God,
in the lore of the crucified
undead Son.
When I glance at the pin oak
and the sun stuns me
blind for a minute—
startle-star, fire-sphere,
crown of fiery tree-glyphs—
I cannot disbelieve
it is not the awe
I once called God.
Mary B. Moore’s newest poetry collection Amanda Chimera, won Madville Publishing’s Arthur Smith prize and came out January, 2025. Prior poetry books include Dear If (Orison Books 2022), a contest finalist; Flicker (Dogfish Head Prize, 2016); The Book Of Snow (Cleveland State U Poetry Center, 1997); and prize-winning chapbooks Amanda and the Man Soul and Eating the Light. Poems have appeared lately in New Letters, Catamaran, POETRY, I-70 Review, South Dakota Review, Birmingham Poetry Review (BPR), NELLE, Nimrod, and Prairie Schooner.
