I used to have dreams about work not done. I was behind on the farm, I was late, the necessity and importance of the job had completely slipped my mind. An example: suddenly it was April or May, and I realized I had forgotten to prune ten whole acres of vines. Always, or almost always, the dreams culminated in a feeling of guilt and shame. It has been many years […]
There is, for me, the feeling that they have always existed,
and have only been waiting for me to notice.
Their patience is a lesson in itself.
Knowing we may travel a time together,
and that they will likely outlive me, are things I love.
And so, if this is drawing, it’s from a deep, hidden well.
A reservoir of dreams. The fragility of health.
Three for the Road — April 2, 2019
Canvas 1,234
They arrived almost immediately after I had awakened
from a surprisingly deep after-lunch sleep.
Or maybe they were already here,
and I am the one who arrived.
Or it might be all of us were away,
and fate arranged our simultaneous return.
March 31, 2019
And then there are the unremembered nights, the unwritten nights,
and the countless ways the dream of light transcends them.
Dream of Light — January 29, 2019
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
I love the droughts in writing, the minutes that seem like hours, the deserts and barren fields, the dust bowls, the great depressions, the jalopies abandoned by the road like these hobo wayward notes. I love raindrops that take years to fall and then land acres apart, if they land at all. I love the peace of a dry well, the coyote’s howl, free for the taking. Dream The […]
For every love, every grief, every pain, an early-morning streetlight — but there is, I am certain, one star to explain. “Early-Morning Streetlight” Recently Banned Literature, December 29, 2014 I Like the Idea I like the idea that there’s an idea. In the bare trees of winter. In the wise-hungry birds. In madness and mittens. Out past the graveyard. Have you seen them? How they roost on the branches […]
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
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 […]
Child that I am, I see the wonders of this world as one great, living, moving consciousness; and, from snail to star, I see each discernible part as an expression of that consciousness. I do not see them as higher or lower forms, or judge them according to a scale of narrow, preconceived worth. Neither do I see myself as being conscious in an otherwise unconscious world, or a world […]
