Part of my Feb 2024 Dream Poems project.
Ghost Crab
In the midst of the deepest night
I almost awaken and form my dream's story
as it flees, a strobing, flickering
shadow just out of sight, flashing
light then dark, and I’m teasing the photons,
poking the dim absence, hunting again
for the body’s dream pose, the shape
that can call it back to me.
When I know there’s more,
unseen but felt like the running
road that continues without me, I might
interrogate: proposing faces, locating myself
in places, casting a name or word its way without
obliterating all traces of what really was.
But dreams don’t like too much probing.
They sideways lurch, slip into slits,
slide and skitter
and all your grasping will not outpace
these ghost crabs of the tidal brain,
safe in their sandy haunts before you register
them at all. They outwait you, aware
of your curious lurking, aware, you could
say, beyond a shadow of a doubt
of the cloud you’ve cast, the inkling terrain.
Sometimes though, sometimes, if I’m quiet
and blank, shadowless as a sunless day,
one will acquiesce, edge upward,
camouflaged like the phantom it is,
materialising and vanishing like a
day-bright mirage
seeking the solace of shade.
©M Wms 2024
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