John Samuel Tieman is an educator associate in APsaA. He is also taking courses in child development at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute and teaches in the St. Louis public schools. He has written poetry, editorials, scholarly essays, and an eyewitness account of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. The Americas Review, The Caribbean Quarterly, The Iowa Review, and the River Styx are just a few of the numerous places his work has been published.
There is a sense of feeling at home in Tieman's poetry. This is particularly true of “prodigal.” The feeling is of inwardly, nostalgically looking home…yet not quite arriving there. “In this dream,” a similar sense is captured, as if one is in familiar and safe territory after a storm, yet there was a storm.
prodigal
I used to imagine my father standing on the porch looking south and foryears I'd look back north hoping to see nothing but distancenow that my father is dead and the sun is low and autumnand sometimes when there's neither light nor shadow and I've movedhome and married and am happy and livejust a mile from the old placejust then there's an old neighbor that stops byhis eyes closed recalling then forgetting then trying to recall
In this dream
There is food and waterand no barrier reef, only shorethis woman is my wifethe compass close enoughthe uncertain current I understandand I feel strangely safe sailing long after darkstill alive days after the disastereverything I need within reach
Sheri Butler Hunt, M.D., is a candidate at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in the adult training program and a graduate analyst in the child division. A published poet and member of TAP's editorial board, she welcomes reader's comments and suggestions at .