Tag Archives: Dreams

Dreamscape

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Monday Morning Musings:

Dreamscape

“Out of the cradle onto the dry land… here it is standing… atoms with consciousness… matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea… wonders at wondering… I… a universe of atoms… an atom in the universe.”
–From, “[UNTITLED ODE TO THE WONDER OF LIFE]”
by Richard Feynman
(You can see read and view the poem here animated with music performed by Yo-Yo Ma.)

In spring, the early mornings are un-silenced
by robin song, woodpecker rattling, goose honks,
and crows calling, “Wake up! Watch out!”

as they fly across the river, where driftwood’s
scattered words are fragments of sentences, parts
of questions, clues to puzzles not yet created.

The clouds tack their masts and sail
across blue, the river birds swim through,
the looking glass. Do we fall
fall through without realizing?

In dreams I float through walls,
like an omniscient ghost, I am all-knowing
narrator and bemused character. Walls dissolve,
rooms expand, and yet when a man appears before me,
I am startled, blocked

on a path I thought was mine to take. I’m awakened
before finding answers—a cat’s insistent meow—
an answer to unasked questions about love, scattered driftwood.
I think of how I watch him dream. His eyes flutter, paws twitch,
sometimes he softly moans. Even insects seem to sleep, it’s
a wild and powerful force, a need

felt by everything on Earth. Perhaps. I look at the moon. She’s become
a crayon-yellow child’s sun. She winks before slipping beneath day’s covers,
reflecting light is wearying. But still, don’t we all long to glow?

March continues its crazy course. We’re back to colder weather. On Saturday, we had several inches of rain (a little bit in our basement). I made a pot of lentil soup and baked batches of Hamantaschen of Purim. That night, we tasted two wines from our Master the World Kit. We are still pretty awful at guessing and deducing, but it’s fun, and I was pleased that I identified the French Gamay (which was delicious). Then we opened another bottle—because Purim. 😉 Fortunately, the sun and wind came out by late afternoon to help dry things up.

We are waiting for the eighth and final (or season finale) episode of Constellation to drop. I hope we are not disappointed by it because we are really caught up in the show.

Yesterday, we played trivia with our daughter and son-in-law at a local brewery. It was fun, and surprisingly we did not come in last.

Ricky the Cat’s new morning routine begins at about 4 AM. He kept waking me up from dreams.

A Thousand Ways of Seeing

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Odilon Redon, “Apparition”

A Thousand Ways of Seeing

The sky sits on the water,
the surface of a dream, beneath

fish swim in schools of letters
forming words and ideas,

the apparatus of the mind
creating variations on a theme,

the way light changes as it travels–
peach to rose to sunflower yellow

rising from a bed of cerulean

long after I rise,
my head still full of dream-images

of a different house, a different life,
a different way of seeing—

I think of how the oak’s bare branches bathed
in dawn’s fiery glow, appear to have bloomed,

a real sight, an illusion,

and wonder
if rocks rip raw the waves,
or if the sea caresses their jagged surfaces?

They’re time-polished either way. One version of me
places a smoothed pebble in her pocket,

the other tosses it back. A speck of its grit might
become a pearl someday.

My poem from the Oracle.

Whispers Beyond

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Profile of a Woman in the Window by Odilon Redon, 1905-09, pastel on cardboard

Whispers Beyond

I dream in moon-murmurs,
a language smooth and cool
as rain, and if I try, I understand
its meaning,

how after-aches, like storms, bring
a luscious curtain of mist, that once raised
reveals bare boughs, newly clothed in sparkling diamonds,
while shadows dance beneath

still and full of movement,
like a thought, there, gone, twinkling
from beyond–the light of dead stars
time whispers, an endless sea.

My message from the Oracle. It took a bit of work. I’ve had a couple of strange days, and I am catching up on posts and comments.

Dream Ocean

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Odilon Redon, Ophelia Among the Flowers

Dream Ocean

Time is an ocean, and we
small fish or sailing ships,
a gull in flight from waves to quay,

in dreams, I am all three.

Through walls I coast
where my dead parents–
look remarkably well, almost

as they were, not ghosts,
but shimmering,

and there my children, both young and older,
and dead pets now alive and by my side–
I am every version of myself—sometimes bolder–

in the multiverse of my mind, I find
sea glass treasures, polished by time
returned to me by dream-sea, ephemeral, sublime.

For dVerse, where Ingrid has asked us to write about dreams or visions.

Smiles of a Winter Dawn

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Moon setting in sunrise glow over the Delaware River at Red Bank Battlefield.

Smiles of a December Dawn

The winter sky is red-suited,
Santa on a flaming chariot,

in almost-light, river spirits dance
and deer leap with a flash of silent white–

if I say leave, the dream goes,
a soul secret–

it is all about perspective,
vast spaces defined in a frame,

within my head, a universe,
and that universe a speck–

see how the moon is merely a smile
beckoning the geese onward?

My message from the Oracle. The photo is from last January, but it was good to see the sun rise today after days of rain and clouds. And I am often aware that my dreams are dreams.

Shadows

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Marc Chagall, “The Fiddler,” 1912

Shadows

If shadows me, like a dream
half-remembered

like that moon, that dripped
quicksilver in summer heat, gone,

like the fiddler whose melodies
float from rooftops
and across oceans–

a thousand melodies,
some not yet composed,
but heart-held, waiting.

The Oracle gave me this message very quickly this morning, as the sun was coming up.

River Poet, Behold Dawn

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Sunrise Clouds over the Delaware River

River Poet, Behold Dawn

after the storms,
moon-shadows danced to fiddle tunes
and dreams swirled in the air,
dressing the forests in purple light,
the gowns made of love, lust, hope, and fear.

These, the pictures that dangle beyond reach
in an endless gallery–
though I will recall some, if I can,
before they vanish in the apricot sky,
in the susurration of the river,
and the cries of ospreys carrying them far into the clouds.

This seems like something I’d share in my Monday Morning Musings, but one doesn’t argue with the Oracle.

After the horrible heat and humidity, we finally got some rain—not enough—but we had a beautiful day yesterday and beautiful weather that will last through the weekend. And there was a full moon. Last night, I had some interesting dreams. The Oracle knows everything.

What about Dreams?

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Monday Morning Musings:

Sunrise Clouds–a new day

What About Dreams?

I’ve written of the river ghosts,
but what about the dreams

that drift, twinkling like stars
beyond reach—as far as

the eagle that soars so high,
blink, and she’s gone–yet seen–

Bald Eagle flying over the river

or the shy deer with quivering ears
who disappears—

but some dreams are like herons
still and waiting to pounce,

A heron at Red Bank Battlefield, and two heron photos by Doug at Pittman Golf Club.

remembered with a sigh, a shudder,
or a smile,

some–you want them to stay awhile.

History slogs, then leaps,
slings arrows of love and hate.

Light and Shadow at Red Bank Battlefield

We are cool—then hot,
here, then not. But

in a world where bees may think and feel,
and trees whisper deep underground,

why is it strange to believe that stars sing,
or that dreams might come true?

It’s been very hot and humid. We didn’t go anywhere this week, but we did celebrate Shabbos virtually with our children and their spouses.

Shabbat Shalom!

I had access from Focus Features for a free streaming of Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. It’s what I think of as a “comfy” film. You know that there will be some upsets, but somehow it will all work out in the end. It’s sort of a fairy tale. The acting is excellent and the film looks beautiful. The Dior gowns, of course, are gorgeous. I thought later that though the dream to go to Paris to buy a Dior gown is not something I can relate to, most people have dreamt of doing something, so in that way, her seeking the gown is a sort of symbol and the movie a quest. It’s not deep, but it’s charming. A definite feel-good movie.

We also went to our video backlog and watched another play. This one was Pipeline on Live from Lincoln Center. It was excellent—both the play itself and the performance. The poem “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks is referenced several times in the play. I found this wonderful video about Brooks and the poem by Manual Cinema on the Poetry Foundation site. We’ve seen Manual Cinema performances live twice, and their shows are wonderful.

And if you missed it, there was an amazing discovery at Red Bank Battlefield, the park where I walk nearly every day, that I wrote about here.

Word Craft Poetry Syllabic Poetry Contest–I’m a winner

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I’m very pleased to announce that I received Third Place in the Word Craft Poetry Syllabic Poetry Contest. The theme was Dreams, and the required form was tanka prose. I think tanka are very difficult to write, so I was especially pleased to be a winner. Congratulations to the winners of the First Place, Second Place, and honorable slots: D. Wallace Peach, Ken Gierke, and Jude Itakali. You can read all of the poems here.

Dream Words

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Monday Morning Musings:

Dream Words

“In the land
of words,
I stand as still
as a tree,
and let the words
rain down on me.”
–Eloise Greenfield, “In the Land of Words”

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars,”
—Walt Whitman from #31 From “Song of Myself”

Early Morning Moon

My dream poem begins
Between a sonnet and an ode,
I can’t remember the rest,
it’s vanished in the universe of my mind,
a star to black hole or a comet to return with a blazing tail—
but me without the telescope to see within

this galaxy of thoughts,
my past, the fragments hurled through time,
and filtered through the space debris of memory.

I’m left trying to determine what I meant,
a borderland of form and matter,
formal structure and rhymed connections,
an abab skip to u–
the meter set by moon rise
and the rhythm by dawn choir.

I could sing the praises
of a leaf of grass, the beauty of the vulture’s glide,

the river tides, or
the scent of spring rain rising

Cloudy morning at low tide, Delaware River at Red Bank Battlefield

the volta of each season, expressed
in a grand reveal, or a subtle exposition

Peonies in bloom, Whitall House

unexpected,
yet familiar, everything

may change in a flash
light to darkness to light—
while we dream,
whether we remember . . . or not.

Sometimes I watch him dream

Movies, Books, This and That:

Good morning! A couple of nights ago, I dreamt an entire poem, and “Between a sonnet and an ode” was really the beginning.

April was quite a month of poetry, wasn’t it? Even though we still seem to alternate warm and cold days, the flowers say it’s now May, as do the goslings, and rabbits.

We fortified ourselves with bruschetta and roasted asparagus from a local farm stand to begin watching the final episodes of Ozark (Season 4, part 2). We watched two episodes—it’s intense, but no spoilers!

We had Chinese food and watched a Chinese movie (of course). 😏 Here is one that most likely few of my readers have seen, Gone with the Light. You’re welcome. The plot will sound familiar—there’s a flash of light and some people all over the world vanish. Trust me, that the movie becomes something quite different, a meditation on love. I enjoyed it very much.

I’m reading A Woman of Intelligence by Karin Tanabe.
I just couldn’t quite finish it last night, but I’m really enjoying this novel of a woman who feels trapped in her life as a housewife in 1950s NYC after working as a translator at the newly created UN. One day she agrees to become an FBI informant, also becoming involved in Cold War spying—and feeling more alive than she’s felt in a long time.