Dream, dream, dream

"They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?" - Waking Life


(a) Every night as I sleep, I dream. Occasionally on waking I can remember some detail. By then, though, it's usually just an outline of itself - as if seen through a thick fog - or a selection of snippets. Aside from that, the feeling is the strongest thing. And even that fades fast unless I capture it in the moment and note it down.

(b) Waking-life can also come on as if it were a dream at times. As a shimmering, half-surreality. Slightly unhinged. Just adrift from the usual moorings. And I'll sometimes catch these moments as they happen, too, and turn them into words.


Here is one.

Dream 1

Green-grey salt bush and red chalk sand.

Distant frazz of moisture

breaks purple grey curtain sky.

While beetle-bullet hugs dark stripmat

drawing horizon over horizon.

While breeze trips dust over dust

And runs soft fingers

through all trees

all branches

and all leaves

all at once.

Aside from any literal or direct, real-world  implications, whether the event itself was (a) real or (b) imagined - or both - is irrelevant. It's a trace of thought and feeling, the shape of a vapour trail etched in the sand, a tremor trapped before fading.

Image credit: elcafedeloslibres

When you were child

When you were child

You knew you were animal.

Crack stick under leaf and bare foot

Kneel soft and crawl slow

Foraging fingers humus grounded

Dirt sole and dirt palm

Follow follow find, follow

Breathe release breathe.

And the scene's slow sigh

Draws you in and out

In pieces imperceptible

Parts of the whole indivisible

Hidden by bracken

Obscured by memory

A glimpse here, there

Diminishing.

When you were child

You knew you were animal.

Now you have to become one again.