I thought I had better call my old friend to see how he was doing,
forgetting for the moment he is dead, yet knowing it too,
and knowing I was forgetting, and knowing I knew.
Dream Fragment — January 28, 2019
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Dreams
Christmas Dream
Christmas Dream By the time we had finished unwrapping my father, we were all very old and yet for all that he still blinked and smiled and said, “We need more wood on the fire.” Songs and Letters, December 24, 2008 [ 228 ]
In the Half-Lit Damp I See a Face
In a dream last night, I was visited by one, or two, or three white-haired gentlemen I apparently should have known, but who were only vaguely familiar. They knew my name, but I did not know theirs. They seemed to be waiting for me to remember. Finally, I confessed I was at a loss, upon which one gave me a hint, a rather long and mystical-sounding title of a musical […]
As Any Thing That Is
I’ve lived in Oregon for more than half of my sixty-two years, yet rare is the day I don’t think about the place of my birth. And there are numerous dreams. Back in 2014, this one became a poem. And yes, there really were nights like this. As Any Thing That Is Another night in the old hometown. The streets we used to roam. The lights are out. There […]
Dreaming of Books
I did something a couple of days ago that I’ve never done before. I bought books online from a shop in England: The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, published in three volumes by John Grant in 1927 in Edinburgh. Anymore, there are very few of these complete sets available. I’ve watched them come and go at prices higher than I’m able or care to spend. This time around, I was […]
The Oaks — Dream as Poem, 2012
From a note written at the time: It’s interesting to me that my attempt to recall and preserve this dream — the doing so of which seemed important because of the presence of my father — would take this form, rather than that of a narrative, as so many of my other dreams have done. The fact is, that is what I first set out to do, but the images […]
The Scent of Gardenia: A Note and a Dream
Up at three-thirty this morning, after reading Spanish for half an hour, I turned to some of the dreams I recorded in 2008 and 2009. Several of them involved my mother and deceased father and my childhood home, and in several others there appeared old school friends, as well as a friend I had at the time who died in 2010. So many strange, familiar situations, filled with longing, color, […]
Lost in San Francisco
Where does a dream end, and the act of remembering it begin? That’s like asking the storyteller if he knows he’s a ghost. The observer is observed, observing the observer, in a succession of night-blue mirrors. And the eyes in them are stars. Some are moving away, others drawing near. And here is the imagined space between them. Lost in San Francisco Lost in San Francisco, I met a […]
November 2016: Poems and Passages
When one posts blog entries almost daily for ten years, there are inevitable changes — in mood, certainly, but also in subject matter, style, and approach. And yet, written as they are by the same hand, they are familiar and recognizable. It’s a bit like visiting a waterfall during different times of the year: now the music is heightened; now the rocks are more exposed; and while the distance from […]
Brothers — A Dream in Greece
November 25, 2009 My friend and I were in an elevator and when the door opened we stepped out into his village in Greece. The ground was lush with soft green grass. There was dew on the grass, and a drowsy blue dragonfly on his coat. There was a small gathering of people. They were his friends and relatives, but there were also some strangers present. In halting English, a […]
William Michaelian 