In the small gray boat
I floated into the lock
and found myself closed in
the giant metal chamber.
Water poured down the end wall,
and I was terrified
by the roar of the spillage,
aware I had no motor,
no sail, no oars, no way
to escape the lock.
But inch by inch, foot by foot,
my boat was lifted
by the growing depths
and I was lifted with it
until the lock opened
and my boat flowed out
into new higher waters.
How is it sometimes
when we cannot imagine
what comes next,
the world shows us
how the unimaginable
happens, and all that is asked
of us is presence and patience?
Released, I still had no way
to steer the boat,
no way to navigate
toward what came next,
but the sun attached
a beam to the bow
and pulled me moment
by shining moment
into the open waves.
Posts Tagged ‘dream’
The Dream
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boat, dream, lock, patience, presence, rising, trust on July 29, 2026| 4 Comments »
Cast of Millions
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged audition, dream, movie, tenderness on February 9, 2026| 6 Comments »
There, on the dream marquis,
in big black all caps
were three words:
DEAR PEOPLE DARE.
I stood on the dream sidewalk
staring up into the vast
dream dark and thought,
someone made a movie
about tenderness—
real people finding courage
to offer love and care
to those who are wounded.
Which is all of us.
That’s when I woke,
determined to audition
for that show every day
for the rest of my life.
Dear Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged America, citizen, dream, Martin Luther King on January 19, 2026| 6 Comments »
with language from the March on Washington Speech and the Letter from Birmingham Jail
Again we must learn how the destiny
of one citizen is the destiny of all.
We must learn we cannot walk alone.
The American dream of liberty
and justice for all is tarnished and torn
in the name of making our country great.
Where is our beacon? How many
deaths will it take? How much horror?
How much ache? Where is our dignity?
Where is our discipline? Where does
the dream still live? Is it in the icy streets
of Minnesota? In detention cells?
In the bare feet of the monks walking
our highways? In the hand-painted
protest signs all across America
proclaiming “We the People?”
Is the dream still alive in the gaps left
in government documents where words
have been banned, words such as “diversity,
woman, Native American, disparity,
inclusiveness, Black, equality, Hispanic,
oppression, community and immigrants?”
Is the dream in red blood in the snow?
In dried blood on the street? In voting booths?
In hope? Dr. King, you taught us we need not
be saints to make a difference. That like you,
we must show up frustrated and flawed as we are.
That freedom “must be demanded
by the oppressed.” Where is the dream?
Where does it live? How might it rise up
in our streets, recalibrate our minds,
and resonate like an anthem
ringing true in our chests?
After Reaching for You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, memory, stillness on December 20, 2025| 6 Comments »
for Finn
There was a list. We were laughing.
This is all I remember as first light
enters the windows, slips
somehow through closed lids.
I keep my eyes closed in hopes
that if I am still enough I can grasp
an image tendril of the dream
and tug it closer.
For hours, it doesn’t work.
When I stop reaching, what is here
are real memories of you—your
head bent over the table doing math,
how jealous you were of your sister’s
snowman stuffy, the way your feet hung
over the end of almost every bed.
Is it true all I had to do was stop reaching
for the dream so that whole skeins
of memories could unravel and wrap
me in their long, faithful strands?
Is it true being still is now the best
way I can hold you? I am still.
Somehow in the softening, I don’t feel
your hand here in my open hand, but I do.
After Effects
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, loss, moss, softening on November 12, 2025| 4 Comments »
In the dream, Craig said to me,
you know, Rosemerry, there
are fifty-eight kinds of loss.
He pointed me to an easel
with a large blank page and handed me
a moss green pen. Here, he said.
Fill them in. There were two columns.
Loss of living. Loss of the dead.
In minutes words filled the page
like clover reproducing in a field.
Loss of time. Loss of breath. Loss of love.
Loss of masks. Loss of shoulds. Loss
of musts. When I woke, I could
no longer name them all. But I
felt them growing in me, feel them,
still, flowerless and powerful,
exploiting any cracks in my certainty,
breaking me down from the inside,
making me softer, softer. Softer.
Only When I Am Not Rushing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, dream, slow, writing on November 10, 2025| 8 Comments »
In the middle of a Monday morning
I let my hands rest in my lap
and truly feel them rest, feel
them empty and open, these
hands that scrub and type
and wash and chop and rub
and dig and yank and knit,
these hands that twist off
and turn on and lift up and
wring out, I let them rest,
and because they have slowed,
a dream from last night lands
in my upturned palms, a dream
in which my father arrives
wanting to write a beautiful letter,
so I find for him thick creamy
paper and an elegant black
pen with dark black ink and
I clear for him a wide cherry desk,
wipe clean the dust and oh,
how wide his smile then.
It is only in the honey-slow
moments I am able to receive
these sweet tendrils from the dead—
only when I defy the momentum
of the human-made rush and
enter into the pace of the real
that I feel the gifts of their presence.
As now, midmorning, my hands
still as fallen leaves in the grass,
fall open to receive my father,
his thick hands poised above the page,
his laughter ringing through the dream
and into this golden, sun-flooded room.
Sleep Walker
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, waking, walking on August 27, 2025| 2 Comments »
Sometimes in my sleep
I walk with you. In the woods
or through the halls of a school
or once in a cave with turquoise pools.
We are almost always laughing.
Sometimes we play chase.
Only when I wake do I remember
you are gone. Is it any wonder
I like to linger in bed, sometimes
for hours, as if I could touch
the dream again, my eyes still closed,
my hands wide open.
Morning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, loss, sun on July 7, 2025| 6 Comments »
By the time I realized
I was dreaming of him,
it was too late.
Already, the dream
was vanishing like night,
like dew.
For an hour I lay there,
eyes closed, grasping
at glimpses. Losing them.
All I was left with:
He was happy.
So was I.
Finally, I opened my eyes
to this world where
he is not. And yet.
The sun was here warming
the bed. More truly, the sun
was not physically here.
The sun is somewhere
far, far, far away,
but that doesn’t stop it
from transforming
the whole room.
On Waking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, dream, liminal space, waking on June 4, 2025| 2 Comments »
Do you, too, love the time between dream and day
when we are gauzy and diaphanous,
more sky than clay, more the spiral than DNA,
love those moments before you remember
your name, before you remember the guns
and the bombs and the lines we have drawn
around right and wrong, before you remember the fingers
we point and those pointed at us and the blame
we shove back and forth. Even now, midday,
if, still, we close our eyes and breathe,
we can almost return to the innocence of it,
can almost feel the weightlessness, the wildness,
the generous knowing of being without measure,
without border, without label, without should.
Imagine we could meet in that undefined space,
that liminal, boundaryless place. All of us nameless
at the very same time. It wouldn’t last. The alarm
always rings. But what if when we all emerge,
some of that spaciousness would cling to us
as we make coffee. Open the door. Drive the car.
Say hello. What would we make of the news?
Living Dream
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Craig Childs, dream, self on March 9, 2025| 7 Comments »
A cool and sunlit morning at the edge
of a canyon with the sun slanting warm
on my bare arms, and Craig said, “Lately
I’ve been dreaming everyone in my dream
is me, and what happens to them happens
to me and what happens to me happens
to them,” and in that moment with the light
still soft, I was a barrel-chested man with
a silvering beard and a halting half chuckle
and a dream of being a woman in white t-shirt
sitting at the edge of a canyon with the sun
shining warm on her long bare arms and
I tell you, it took no effort from me at all
for the moment to lose its walls and for
the self to lose its frame and I became
whatever a slant of light is—
I don’t even remember taking it,
that first step over the edge.
The Man Who Rings Me Up at Target
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, hope, labor, mother, transformation, work on December 19, 2024| 4 Comments »
tells me he used to be mean.
Tells me used to not like
who he was. Tells me he dreamed
of his mother after she died
and she told him that though
she was no longer with him,
she still could teach him
how to be alive, which,
in practical terms, meant
how to be kind.
In the time it takes for me to buy
lint rollers and lip balm,
I am so moved by this woman
I will only meet through
a dream and a checkout lane
conversation that I walk out
into the night with a smile
on my face. This is the way
we share hope with each other,
one thin strand at a time.
By the time I get to the car,
I’m still smiling, wholly tethered to life
by a gift that appeared so slight
at first I didn’t even know
it was there.
No Wonder I Woke Singing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, friendship, grief, singing on December 5, 2024| 11 Comments »
for Donna
I saw you last night in my dream.
We were singing, of course.
The strange part is we were floating
in inner tubes in your home
which was flooded. I was worried,
but you didn’t seem bothered.
The smile never left your face.
The water was clear and we could see
to the bottom where the rugs
and chairs and tables were still in place.
We paddled around the room
and sang with our friends. God,
it was good to sing with you again,
me still here in the flood of the world
and you teaching me to sing
through it all. Teaching me
smiling is still possible. Teaching me
even the weight of grief can float.
In the dream I discover
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dance, dream, letting go on September 22, 2024| 8 Comments »
I’ve left all the bunnies
in a cupboard for two days.
Why would I put them
in a cupboard?
How is it I forgot them
after rescuing them?
They tumble out, every
shape, size and shade of bunny
and I fall in love with them all
as they explore the room.
They seem no worse for my lapse,
but I am so distraught,
my husband wakes me from
sleep as I whimper.
Hours later, I still wonder
what precious and vital thing
have I locked away?
I don’t want to wake up
to my life tomorrow or next year
or ever to discover I have
not cared for the treasure
entrusted to me. All day,
there are no rabbits, no cupboards,
no locks. Only this life
with its tendernesses,
its vulnerabilities. All day,
I open every door
of the mind, of the heart.
No doubt there are more I can’t find.
I feel for the doors with the fingers
of my heart. Whatever’s inside,
I want it to breathe.
Everything seems
to depend on this:
not only that I care
for the treasure,
but that I let it free.
The Morning Before What Would Be His Twentieth Birthday, I Dream of My Son
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, dream, grief, mess, mud on September 11, 2024| 9 Comments »
He is young, and it’s raining,
and we are playing on piles
of mud with his sister
the way we often did.
There are channels
of rain water beneath us.
We’re covered in mud.
Mud on our clothes.
Mud on our faces.
Our eyes shine bright
through the mud.
I don’t remember he’s dead.
Our laughter weaves
through the rain
as if it has wings.
And we splash.
How I love
the mess of it all.
When I wake,
I’m too clean,
but all day I feel it,
the way the dream mud
has stuck to my thoughts.
I do not try to wash it off.
Beyond Sight
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged control, dream, god, hand, surrender, trust on August 26, 2024| 5 Comments »
All around me, the world
was normal—people eating dinner
or walking down the street—
but my world?
Some massive, invisible hand
kept capturing me, then
tossing me into the air.
And I’d somersault
and fall and be caught,
then placed upright again
on the ground. All night
it went on like this.
I’d be walking and then
I’d be flying and then
I’d be falling and then
I’d be caught, until finally,
by morning, we couldn’t say
that it wasn’t disconcerting,
but we could say I
had become more fluent
in this strange upheaval.
We could say I
had begun to trust
the same hand that tossed me
would catch me.
We could say that when
I woke up, I was still myself
and nothing felt the same.
And though my feet
never left the ground today,
I was tossed.
And then I was caught.
Even now, I almost feel them
around my chest,
those great fingers
as they set me on my feet again.
Undreaming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, smile on September 28, 2023| 7 Comments »
Though I’ve dyed his pants pink
by accident, not black as he’d hoped,
the seam of his smile
spreads easily across his face,
a smile easy as sunrise, easy as moonset,
forgiving as the smile of someone who knows
what doesn’t matter and what does.
When I wake, his smile
stays with me. Every time
I close my eyes, there it is,
widening as my heart unravels
itself in my chest.
There it is, that smile, so real
it’s still there when my eyes are open,
stitching me back into the world.
A Tale of Two Dreams
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, healing, river, wonder on September 9, 2023| 6 Comments »
I slipped into the river by choice
and the current did not steal me away.
All around me was golden light.
I pulled my hands through clear water,
then raised them to the sky,
To my surprise, I had gathered
from below the surface a shimmering amethyst glitter
now suspended and radiant in the air.
When I woke, I recalled a dream
from two years ago, such desperate days.
I’d fallen in the river by accident
and the current pulled me quickly from shore.
No choice but go through long rapids.
Muddy waves crashed over me.
Whirlpools pulled me down.
I knew it would be hard. I knew I could swim.
Oh, swimmer, you have been carried
by the waters that would drown you.
Great waves. Strong forces. The silt falling out.
Of course, you are weeping with grief, with wonder.