Master Class

In a visually spectacular dream some

years back, I took Paul Klee’s posthumous

class in poetry and painting. What luck to

be swept with the elect across the ocean

that night to environs that could only

be by Klee. Klee? you protest. Surely

the dreamer is everyone in her dream. Yes,

and no, but isn’t that so even in waking

classrooms? In this one, an expansive

gesture by Klee enveloped us in

an oasis city lit by multiple moons

and scribbled stars in a cosmos where

indigenous genies served as surrogates

and guides, leading us through the gates

and along the pathways of painting

after painting. So entranced were we

by the let-there-be-twilight mystery and

élan of the gardens and towers, amiable

night birds and camels of the optically

implausible dimensions before our

eyes, that like the dazzled apostle

on the mountain, I’d have broken

the spell to say: Let’s pitch our tents

and stay! Had not Klee’s lessons in

bridging seen and unseen, non-dream

or dream — while staying true to and free

from the initial inspiration — resolved

a longtime poetic conundrum, luring

me across the Atlantic back to bed

to a poem where I ambled with my

camel, several moons overhead.