Middle Dreams
by Toni Asante Lightfoot
And with great fear I
inhabit the middle of the night
What wrecks of the
mind await me, what drugs
to dull the senses
John Wieners
"The Acts of
Youth"
Between real sleep and
the waking spasm and
between what you are and
what you with
the ignorant exuberance
of youth thought a great
life would be, lay the
between of hope and fear.
I am living a life i
never knew possible to the "I"
of my youth to grow
into. This body I inhabit
long ago betrayed me. By
22, it moved from the
smooth, taught, supple
center to the broad middle
of a middle aged broad.
I have had this body of
middle age twice as long
as i had the
great body glowing like
morning, enticing night
with dance, bourbon, and
"yes". Yesteryear is what
years of tomorrow have
become. Wrecks
of relationships make
the shoreline of
my memories fascinating.
Among the
lost ships I visit when
i have time for my mind
to salvage from them the
shiny bits that await
my wiser translation of
the loud, scared me
is the big hulking ship
holding dreams. What
do I do to quell their
haunting? Drugs,
whiskey? No, I line them
up, look them over to
remind myself: I am
"here" because "there" looked dull.
Under the magnifying
glass of age the
bright light of
perspective tantalizes my senses.
Toni Asante Lightfoot is
a native of Washington, DC, where she was president of the African American
Writer's Guild. She moved to Chicago and was the director of writing programs
at Young Chicago Authors. She currently consults on curriculum development that
integrates the poetry with mathematical and scientific theory. Lightfoot is
currently studying Chinese acupuncture and herbology.
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