WHAT COLOR IS YOUR BEDSPREAD (a poem)

Once she saw the Persian design

of the bedspread that Freud had on his couch,

the one he had shipped from Germany to England in 1938,

things were never the same.

As a therapist, she immediately changed

all her massage table coverings –

no more plain, single-color sheets,

only Indian bedspreads.

And the states of mind of the people

who lay there were altered.

What had been a sheet

became a magic carpet.

Indeed every night when

every one across the globe lies

down, they are carried upon

the magic carpet of sleep.

Even the horrors of those most at risk

disappear for some moments

and for many the application as well

of a bedspread takes dreaming to another level.

For a time we ride

like floating brides in some paintings,

with perhaps flowers in the sky,

animals swimming in the air.

“Pull a sheet up to my shoulders,” she said,

“and, if I’m lucky, a bedspread,

and I join with all people

on sleep’s carpet.”

FREUD’S COUCH