(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
Word to the wise: Don’t take Claritin-D shortly before going to bed, especially when you really need to sleep. Your sinuses will be clear, but you’ll just lie there with racing thoughts. The “D” in Claritin-D apparently stands for doggerel.
On the night I wrote this poem, I messed up, and took the wrong medication. As a result, I was wide awake, and I started doing something I often do when I first wake up in the morning: in my head I was taking words and arranging them in various orders, looking for an arrangement that pleased me. In the end, the only way I could get this out of my head was to get out of bed and write down the results. It’s not a great poem, but at least I DID get to sleep after writing it.
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
In my dream two nights ago, my friend and I were stealing large tables from a church. We spotted a police officer, and my friend said, “We’ll rent that box truck!” Quickly, I threw my table into the back of the truck and leaped in after it. WHAM! I had launched myself out of bed and landed on my knees. Crime doesn’t pay, even in my sleep.
In trying to come up with appropriate hashtags for this poem that I wrote last night, I did a search for “moving in dreams.” I’m not going to dignify the results. As with most searches I make these days for “what does it mean if I [fill in the blank],” Google supplied articles suggesting that I am in the early stages of senescence. I suspect the little boys and girls at Google are having a good laugh at my expense.
Back to reality…. Obviously, Susan woke up and asked why I had landed on the floor. I spared her the details of the dream until morning. But she went and got some arnica cream for me to rub on my knee caps along with an ice pack to prevent swelling. I lay there feeling the chill on my knees and contemplating the end of my walking days. Two days later, I think I’ll be fine. But Susan has mentioned a guard rail. And she definitely wants me to keep a pillow on the wooden chest that my face would hit if my knees don’t hit first. She isn’t worried that I’d lose my good looks. It’s my cranium that concerns her.
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
Most dreams can be tossed. This one, I thought I’d better save. What does it mean?
The longer I write poetry, the more it seems to be a revealing of the subconscious. I had no control over the dream. But I did have control over how I described it. That the ghostly figure was “removed,” and that I experienced this as “loss” probably points to a sense of loss that haunts me these days.
What have I lost? What am I losing? Plenty. If it weren’t for the promise of eternal life, and a restoration of good things, maybe even the gold would have disappeared. But the gold remained.
(background adapted from image by Andrew Martin on Pixabay)
DON’T HATE ME FOR THIS Almost every day, I take an afternoon nap while listening to music. I try hard then to let my imagination wander free. Often, I think of other artists, and the grasp they have of beauty. I, too, have known beauty. Someday, all of us who know the Author of beauty will have unbridled joy in His creation. Nap time is a good time to savor that hope. In Him, we rest.
This strange poem is the nightmare I had last night. I *think* it wove two strands: contemplating Acts vis-a-vis evangelical triumphalism (really!), and reflecting on the vulnerability young people have to passions (I’m a father, who once was young).
