My Waking Dream of Questions

Diane Gilliam

MY WAKING DREAM OF THE QUESTIONS

For Alexis de Veaux, and the Hobart Festival of Women Writers

I’m having trouble remembering now

the title of the panel, how many Black women

sitting at the front table  how many White

and neither could I say how many of each 

in the chairs facing them but many 

of each not the usual dearth

of dark faces and one of the younger

Black women on the panel says

I don’t have time for someone who wants

to write about her garden she says it in all

truth and urgency without question 

and at the end of her talk

what comes back to her is not a question 

but a challenge I have to challenge you

on that says a middle-aged White woman standing

at the back of the room behind the rows

of chairs I have to defend a woman’s right

to write about whatever she wants

to write about and the Black woman

says she is speaking to her own

priorities she has other

work to do and I am not remembering

her words exactly but I am doing

my best to be urgent and true and

another White woman stands up

at the back of the room I am one

of those women who wants to write

about her garden she says I find

it beautiful and I find meaning 

there and I cannot see what

could be wrong with that

and again I am not remembering

her words exactly but I am

telling you true as I can

and the air in the room

got very stiff and bodies 

stiffened breathing it in as if

everyone knew already the kind 

of pain that was coming and

no one wanted it to come

but there was some kind

of answer already in each body in each

chair and there is a kind of finality

to answers something that can’t 

be taken back and just when it all

could have come to grief

       the wise woman asks a question

       could we turn out the lights she says

       and someone does and she tells us

       to feel the dark to breathe it in   it isn’t very dark

                                           but the harshness from the overhead lights

                                           was gone from the room   a harshness

                                           gone and the bodies in the chairs

                                           soften a bit   the air softens and

ask your questions the wise woman says

whatever they are and the bodies in the chairs

seem to turn inward to look for what

their questions really are and I wish

I could tell you now what questions 

they found I am not remembering

this part but I can tell you true the room

opened from the inside out 

questions bloomed in that room

like a garden that has been held back

by bad weather too much sun not

enough water suddenly given 

what it needed all along   which was work

work we could do without hurting 

each other  the work of knowing

differently   knowing each one by what

she did not know   knowing ourselves

by what we did not know 

and that other light the one       

that the wise woman had asked us

 to turn off   we left it off

as we left that room

      our way back into the world 

      lit as it was 

by questions

CAIM

Circling prayers, also known as Caim prayers (from the Irish gaelic meaning 'protection'), are used to create a ring of safety around one's self ...

I like to think of the moon

as the Great Round at a remove

now from the way she used to hold

us all inside   us and all the things

of the world until we came

in our understanding to believe

that we were different 

from all the things and all the things

different from each other and we among

ourselves also so different and apart

and maybe she thought to let us

go at that point but mother that she is

she stays around   her soft light a reminder

that she is one thing sometimes yellow

white  orange   blood    harvest

shadows’ hollows showing on her face—

the dark side insisting on itself 

one thing

      one state 

of being holding us all

in her endless encircling

her mother face hovering

over our beds in the night

our light 

left on in the hallway

our one thing

LONG BEFORE

Long before the days of searching

the mirror for clues, and taking stock

of other people’s faces when I came

into a room; before commercials

had anything to do with me

and magazines were for cutting up

for collages of food groups or shapes

or colors; before that 

dressing down by the art teacher 

and the girls who passed 

for friends but were nobody 

I even liked, before all that

nonsense, I wrote

my first novel. I must have been

nine or ten, because I remember clearly

the thick bic pen cursive on wide-ruled

notebook paper, writing on both sides-- 

and third grade was when we learned

to write that way.  It was about a girl,

an indentured servant, who got away

and along the way met another girl,

different, and in a different

kind of danger, and they got away

together.  And whoever they asked

for help, miraculously, helped them.

And when my mother knocked

on my bedroom door to see 

what I was doing, I opened the door

just a crack, and waggled 

the pile of pages I was making

at her and told her no, 

I didn’t want to go outside 

and play with Karen.

I was writing.