The Disciplines (all those terminal degrees)

The Disciplines (all those terminal degrees)

We are from different times

and different places,

but intersections and magnetism

are beautiful narcotics.

I am now forced to be an archeologist

of my own dreams

where you come again and again

offering indifference.

This is a different kind of discipline, then,

because it is not my field,

and even in my rare dreamweaving,

I am a rank amateur.

Sleeping, I must not shout out your name

in the middle of the night;

I must not fling back warmed covers,

leaping up to run again to you.

But it is there I am disciplined, a Grand Master,

a Jedi, a ninja in all black,

having perfecting the nuanced art of lies

and deception—of not being me.

The disciplines lead us to the inevitable, I suppose,

of all those terminal degrees.