Part of my Feb 2024 Dream Poems project.
Almost Forgotten
I wake up and it all makes sense.
Yes, yes, a place called the Cabin John Buttery,
with an old-fashioned car that I could draw you,
yellow and light blue, parked outside.
Yes, a bus driver bringing two stolen crow’s eggs to my house.
Yes, a waitress tells us that the only thing they’re out of
is fennel; immediately Marion orders the fennel salad.
OK, that’s not wildly fictional,
that could be real life, if she were alive.
I’m pulling up late in a sports car that’s raggedly wrapped in a husk,
except the windshield. I’m in Amman, Jordan with a friend,
floating on the salty beach; a curtain in the sea is pulled shut
to keep us from seeing it. We can’t see the sea.
There’s a smallish slouched man in a restaurant, next to my friend;
I describe him to her as Halfman and the man next to me
exclaims, “Oh that’s the name of my son!”
Even in the dream, my friend and I laugh until we can’t breathe.
When I type up the dream, I notice how many times I’m typing
the word man. The dreamer didn’t notice that.
I’m working for my realtor, helping her look into a prescription
for a health care provider who‘s an expert in
home canning.
I’m watching a screen where the realtor and a big-shot lawyer
perform a musical, which is part of a law lesson.
I’m looking for bathrooms, looking for dogs, getting lost,
stumbling into scenes, surrounded by a resurrection
of dead people, trying on clothes, exploring
an endless procession of buildings, an array
of cities, place after place
after place, no end to the searching.
I wake up and it all makes sense.
It makes sense for a minute or two
while my memory recounts it to the sleeper.
Then it washes away, swept cleanly out to sea,
a sea I can’t see. Hours later, if I return to it,
it’s devolved. How deluded I was last night,
believing in the vivid truth of these unlikely narratives
that feel at least as real as this moment.
Who thinks of these things?
Obviously, I’m not in control.
Obviously, there’s someone in my mind besides me.
Obviously, they know things I don’t know.
How do they know these things,
if I don’t know them?
And if I know them,
why have I almost
forgotten?
© M Wms 2024
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