dreams

An Actual Dream

I had an actual dream! I never remember any dreams!  I was in love with the shape of a square, and wrote a very spare poem about it, not a word of which I remember. In my dream people read my poem and got very excited about how good a poet I was, and I was very excited too, both about the shape of a square and the poem I wrote about it.The dream is so boring that it almost interests me. So I Wrote a Made-up Dream.

Photo by Tiko Giorgadze on Unsplash

I poured my imagination through my left ear into a bowl on the nightstand hoping for a dreamless nap but as I might have known,  it spilled over the sides and streamed onto the floor where every kind of tiny fish began to jump and gasp--leaving me high and dry so it could do as it wanted-- and soon there was a sea turtle, a baby walrus, three penguins, a couple of clams while I slept on dreamless, but I know the trouble you went to because when I began to wake the ocean whisked itself back into the bowl with an impossibly  tiny splash and then into my ear, leaving fish all over the floor but taking everything else with it, and I saw you just as you were coming towards me naked and beautiful. Really. I’d know you anywhere. You could have just knocked.

I sent the dream poem to a writer friend. Sometimes we show each other our new work. I never heard from him again. I’m afraid he might have thought it was about him. Honest to god I had nobody in mind at all. The damned thing wrote itself. I don’t know who it was, if anybody. But the rock station this morning played a Moody Blues song that brings back memories of a tall boyish man, he was not really a serious love, but music brings him back hard. I’m not sure why. He had only read one book in his life: Dune. I don’t think he did a lot of deep thinking, but neither did I. Maybe because he knew what he wanted, and what he wanted was me. It was really pretty simple. He pointed to the mattress on his floor, grinning, “Lie down,” he’d say.  So once in a while I listen to the Moody Blues and I google him. I’m an 82 year old stalker. I don’t want to see him, or talk to him, but I wish he knew sometimes I think of him. Hey you.