Doctrine of Correspondences

Things rhyme at night;
images in dreams repeat
with only minor variations–
a shift in light,
a different parking hardscape
in which to lose my bright red car,
another subject flunked in high school–
Spanish or algebra–
to redress in the brown serge skirt
and catholic saddle shoes,
a fifty-year-cold remediation.
The penance over, I can slide again
behind the podium to teach
the terza rima and perfect numbers
in Dante’s vision of a balanced hell:
hypocrites wear unbearable brocades
with leaden threads. and desire-blown
lovers, in solo circles, embrace
the nothingness of emptied hearts:
the punishment fits the crime”
The Doctrine of Correspondences.

In daylight, does our living also rhyme?
Does the living fit the living
in the stages of our lives?
I think it does. The childhood table
I burrowed into books beneath
becomes my unlit Sundays encaved
in work and grading student papers.
But now I’m old and do not want
to hide from the fading sun that
crawls across my living-room floor.
Instead, I count and match the shadows cast
against the wall to corresponding names–
of fear and hurt, of wounded heart and anger–
and dare the many tongues of the inner fire,
to speak a doctrine of my fierce completion
in one clear voice: conflagration.
-Kitty Yanson