Deanna on the Mayan Steps

Dreamed 1992/7/8 by Chris Wayan

"What does a woman WANT?"
--Sigmund Freud

I was lost in a dreamdark wood, But Deanna Troy walked by me. Counselor of the Enterprise, Half human, half child of a tree. On her breast's an amulet Carved of her own mother's wood. Emboldened by her empathy, I sought a long-viewed clearing. Whose woods these are, I gotta know: Soul-orienteering. Dolmens leaned. We found a Mayan stair Snaking up through lichen-stones. A pyramid, but the glyphs too fresh, Too Disney to be true. I mused as we neared the temple's peak "Civilian Conservation Corps?" The altar floated in sequoia-heads Squinting, kind, and gnarled as Popeye. Above, gray cliffs, engraved on mist Like a Doré halftone dream. At last I knew where we wandered! For my Dante wood was Yosemite's floor. Scar of a glacier's scour!

A quiet man was there. I felt a senseless fear. As I told Deanna, he turned and smiled And groped in his bag for the gun. I knew. I knew. The blow went through... I burst out to a tangled bed, Only a journal by me, Blurred in the dim dawn. Deanna and killer together--gone. Fool. Fool! What I might have learned, With Deanna the empath to read his heart! But I let him shoot me back to the world to keep his sack of secrets dark. I woke so righteous. Murderer! But later, less and less felt sure. Why feel a bullet, yet hear no gun? Was I numb from shock? Or did my own terror knock me un, before he could... talk? Ultimatum? Compromise? Warning, challenge, rant? Freud never asked, but it hits me bullet-blunt-- What does a nightmare want?