Pool of Truth

Dreamed 1983/10/1 by Katherine Metcalf Nelson
"Anything capable of being imagined is an image of truth"--William Blake

POOL OF TRUTH It is late at night. Police lights flash in darkness around a massive accident at an intersection. Naked bodies are strewn across the road. I think of Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, a wreck at sea that reduced political idealism to cannibalism. Destruction and pain. Nausea floods me as I turn in the opposite direction, sickened by this devastating confusion of gas, blood, steel, and flesh. Descending spiral stairs to a ground-level patio, I meet mothers and daughters who talk about charity and friendship. I wish I could believe this Mormon sermon of "good-sister" values, but I feel uneasy in this space. We are handed round cakes and told, "Throw a piece into the pool of truth and ask a question." My three friends ask questions about life and love, but I cannot. I throw my cake into the pool and suddenly out pops, "Should I paint?" No answer. Below me, stairs covered with skins of white bears lead to a lower level. As I go down, I feel a sharp biting pain in my left hand. Taking my hand off the rail, I step carefully over the sleeping polar bears.

Source: Katherine Metcalf Nelson's Night Fishing, 1997, p.74