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DREAMS AS POETRY 7
THE MERMAID’S TALE
LEANNE DOMASH, PhD
When I saw the call for submission of poems from dreams, I was inspired. These are
my two favorite formats. Poems and dreams can transform. This poem expresses
diving deeply into love, into friendship, and into the unconscious. I hope the reader,
if only fleetingly, can experience the joy and pleasure of the young woman in love,
the warmth of the woman laughing with her close friends and children, and the
anticipation and lightness of the mermaid diving into the unknown.
We are all in a hotel lobby.
“You don’t know how serious we are.
We are deep,” the glamorous woman told me,
describing her relationship with her boyfriend.
Then I see another woman, Mexican, laughing,
slapping a child good-naturedly,
talking with women friends,
her arms moving like an octopus.
Then I, naked from the waist up,
and having grown a mermaid tail,
glide through the lobby as if propelled by a motor
The watery air carrying me right up to the front desk.
Free, light, settling.
Ready for my swim.
Leanne Domash, PhD, has completed an intensive training program at
the Los Angeles Embodied Imagination Institute, a post-Jungian course
of dream study developed by Robert Bosnak. This work facilitates creativity
and change. She is in private practice in Manhattan and is consultant,
NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis,
and voluntary psychologist, Mt. Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center.