The University of Texas at Austin

Law in Popular Culture collection

The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006)
reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum

Lawyers & Poets
Scenes | | Dreams

HELEN BAILEY
_________________

Silent Masquerade

It's a thin disguise,
this silence, comforting
against remembrance.
Dreams that would intrude
are not the stuff of light
and fade among the details of the day.
Bound and packaged photos
safely tucked away
for another time,
and there will be that time
surely, when I will study the faces,
the smiles, that dress,
the ill fitting trousers,
yes, I'll remember all,
an afternoon, the voices
and the stories they told.
    
[725]


Here and Elsewhere

Elsewhere,
the coffee is strong,
the food flavored with spices
I could not name,
scents I could not remember
but by some trigger, later,
elsewhere,
wrestled the feeling
to recollection, walking
on century smoothed stones
in a village of a name
I could not pronounce,
words spoken
I did not understand,
a stranger then, still.

[726]


Into the Half Life

It is only morning
already the day is leaking.
Specters of night's dreaming,
lurk in corner eye
and dissolve with turning,
floaters on the day's vision
begging to remembrance
their stories half-told.

[727]


A Theory of Time

I felt the scent of him
and sighed into its comfort
though years had passed
since we were together
but by some glitch
in the order of things
was cast back to a moment
one of countless millions
each an eternal fraction of a life.

[728]

 
Out of Time
 
A gray day such as this
lives in other tenses
no dimension of its own
ensnared in expectation
and filmy recollection.

wind and white
a leaf vermilion

[729]

 
The Kite

A child's fingers,
knotted by a rage
that barely stems sobs
pressed against lashes,
gropes the string
hopelessly
entangled
in that moment of steep
descent
joy to this
as he stands
mindless
by purpose
to the carrion bird of
broken reeds and gossamer.

[730]


Helen Bailey lives in West Gardiner, Maine and practices disability rights law in Augusta. Bailey obtained a B.A. in philosophy from Fordham University in 1970 and her law degree from the University of Maine School of Law in 1978.