We’re traveling together, you,
me, your father, your sister. And
we’re laughing. You’re talking
about your classes for college,
and you’re nervous about seeing
a girl again, and I have this bright feeling
that you’ve passed some threshold.
You’re a firecracker, wild with potential,
and I can’t understand this swirl of worry
that churns through me like smoke.
It’s only after you race down the concourse
showing off your speed,
arms pumping, legs a blur,
your body quick and slender verb,
it’s only then when you don’t come back
I remember you already made a choice to die,
and in the dream I wail, battered again
by the bludgeon of immediate loss.
When I wake, I’m still wearing
the sweet perfume of promise and hope,
even as tears slip hot to the sheets.
It’s not easy, today, to rise, to step
into this world of heartache and courage,
this world you left, this world I love.
Posts Tagged ‘dream’
The Swirl
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, dream, grief, son on August 13, 2023| 29 Comments »
Fearless
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, falling, fear, life, survival on July 3, 2023| 3 Comments »
One day, perhaps, I will be as fearless
as I was last night in my dream—
when I went careening over the high cliff,
and as I entered free fall, I thought,
wow, this is it, you really did it this time—
and as the air rushed past my face
I thought If these are your last few moments,
can you choose to enjoy them?
In every other dream of falling,
I fell into fear, a deep clenching.
But this time my arms unfurled full length,
my legs spread, my eyes widened,
and I gave myself to the falling.
God, I was free.
When I landed face first on a rooftop,
I was, for a time, motionless, bruised,
breathless, and then, sweet miracle,
thrilled by the fall, I walked away,
so much life in every step.
By the Light of the Moon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, long marriage, sleep on May 10, 2023| 11 Comments »
Such tender choreography,
the way we fall asleep,
our bodies quiet beside each other,
my hand a bird inside the nest of your hand,
and then, when you turn to one side
my body, even in sleep, will turn to curl
with yours. And later, we are again like two stems,
like two wicks, like twin streams touching.
I don’t understand how it is
our bodies know to move, to curve,
to find each other in the dark. I only know
I am grateful for these night hours
when flesh is soft and full of dream
and trust is a sweet and blooming thing
and there is a beauty that no one else sees
as we turn again, turn again.
A Blessing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, loss, love, presence, time on March 20, 2023| 8 Comments »
In the dream, you are ten
and your slender body
curls into my side. We
lie on a purple bed.
Our awareness wings
at the edge of sleep,
our bodies more stone
than bird, your head
on my arm as heavy as time,
and I think, I love this
sweet sapling boy.
In the dream, you are alive,
and I sink all the way
into the sweetness
of the moment
the way I sometimes don’t
in life. I sink full weight
into the tender present
and no part of me wishes
to be anywhere but
in the low golden dream light,
your body warm and gentled,
my body quiet and easy.
Two days later,
I feel it still, the heft of love
unending and generous
close against my side.
It invites me to be more here
with the ones I am with.
With that same arm that held you,
I hold them. Time lifts.
All at Once
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breakfast, dream, grief, joy, mess, mother on February 18, 2023| 17 Comments »
Before I woke, my son and I
were eating breakfast—
a beautiful brown-crusted boule,
warm from the oven,
and he was slicing it and making
a giant mess of it,
the bread tearing and smushing,
and we were laughing—
his head was thrown back
with the joy of making a mess,
carefree and goofy and foolish.
Crumbs everywhere.
God, how I loved him
as he smashed a hardboiled egg
onto the uneven slice.
How I loved him
as he stuffed his mouth
with the botched bread and egg.
How I loved him as we laughed
and laughed and laughed.
How I loved him when I woke
and he was dead,
his absence making the love
no less beautiful, no less true,
our laughter no less mirthful
in the empty room.
One Lingering
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, eternity, time, wine on February 2, 2023| 6 Comments »
a year later, still savoring
the tingling silky aftertaste of eternity
I sipped in a dream
The Morning After
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dancing, dream, grief, love, mother on January 7, 2023| 8 Comments »
Though I knew it was a dream,
I thrilled to see you and your sister
tap dancing together,
performing in a bowling alley of all places,
each of you standing in front of your own lane,
both of you smiling, your arms scissoring in unison,
your bodies tilted forward, your legs kicking back,
the bright tap, tappity, tappity, tap of metal on wood,
your movements perfectly synchronized.
Then off you both danced down the lanes,
flapping and turning and leaping and shuffling,
two glorious blurs as you traveled toward the pins,
long legs flying, arms extended, your faces lit up,
no music but the rhythm in your feet.
I watched you both, breathless, thinking, I love this dream.
I love it even more this morning after,
still lying in bed, eyes still closed,
heart full of wonder, cells pulsing with love.
I keep unwrapping the dream like the gift it is.
There are some who would say I’m unlucky.
I know I am wildly blessed to have known you so closely,
blessed to love you and your sister,
blessed to have been changed by you both,
blessed to know your agony and your beauty,
blessed to know by heart the sound your feet make
as they dance across this world.
So Real, the Dream
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cable car, dream, love, reality, san francisco, trust on November 23, 2022| 6 Comments »
In the dream, it was clear,
I am the cable car
and love itself is the cable
beneath the streets,
that pulls me along
up the steepest of hills,
requiring nothing
except I hold on.
Though I can’t see it, it’s there.
Though I must sometimes let go,
I must always return to holding it.
When I woke,
the dream was fuzzy,
but the truth no less clear:
love has carried me.
All day I marvel
at the strength of the cable.
All day I am grateful
for love beyond understanding:
invisible love, powerful love,
a continuous unbroken loop.
Even now, I hear it
singing in its motion,
song of constancy,
song of trust.
Because Last Night I Dreamt of You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, drums, love, music on October 6, 2022| 6 Comments »
This morning I wake and my body
is a concert hall still echoing
the beauty of the night before—
like the morning after the symphony
when the theater walls and
the red velvet curtains still remember
the swell, the strings, the silence
before the applause. Oh,
how I love my body on these mornings.
I linger in the sheets, my eyes closed,
my arms flung over my head,
my belly soft as I open myself to memory.
It’s fleeting, it’s flirty, it’s there,
then it’s not. What was symphonic
is now a mere echo of what was—
as if everyone left, but the drummer
is still there alone on stage,
beating out a tempo, complex,
but true. Hello heart. Hello heart.
Was it really just a dream?
The melody escapes me,
but I swear I still hear the rhythm.
New Dream
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged abundance, dream, grief, scarcity on June 17, 2022| 8 Comments »
Why do I resist this room
with its wall of windows,
its low-angled light,
the tables all laden
with apples and mangos
and long braids of bread?
Why do I feel myself
leaning away
from miraculous abundance,
white linen cloths,
and pale yellow bouquets?
This cake is sweet
but I cannot taste it.
Surrounded by food,
I have a different hunger.
Surrounded with lushness,
I feel a different need.
Sometimes what the heart
most craves is
nothing—
the fast between the feasts,
the spaciousness
filled only by love.
I am not afraid
of emptiness.
I need what I need,
and it’s spare.
Thank you for the feast—
I don’t mean to be ungrateful.
There is beauty, too,
in barrenness.
I don’t want to fill
this hole.
When I Told My Teacher About My Dream
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anxiety, dream, heart, Joi Sharp, love, perfectionism, student, teacher on May 24, 2022| 8 Comments »
The heart doesn’t have perfectionism.
—Joi Sharp
All night I dreamt
I was teaching a class
I’d never prepared for.
I’d never even seen
the textbook,
didn’t have a roster
for the students,
and couldn’t understand
how I’d arrived in this place
where I seemed destined
to let everyone down.
Even the chalk wouldn’t work
on the chalkboard.
All night I fought
an inner monster,
the one that says,
You are not enough.
All night it chased me
through the channels
of my fears, those
synaptic paths
well-traveled for years.
Oh world, let me be
the student.
Let me be one
who learns to live
through the heart,
who loves with confidence.
Let me study the ways
love meets the monster—
not with a fight
but with indifference.
Parallel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, parallel universe on April 19, 2022| 14 Comments »
And there my son was, standing with me
in a giant warehouse, trying on new shirts.
Both of us knew he had died,
and both of us knew we were now in a parallel reality
in which he had made a different choice.
I could still remember that other life,
that one in which I lost him,
so I wanted to ask him
if he remembered what it felt like to die.
Ask later, I thought. Give him space, give him time.
But he said, as he held up a blue t-shirt,
This time I am going to take things easier.
This time, I’m not going to stress so much
about grades and stuff.
Then he shrugged, and smiled, content in his tall body.
I knew it was a dream, and so, as the dawn light
entered my awareness, I willed myself
to stay in this place where he was with me,
this place where he was at peace.
I woke eventually, of course,
because that is what the living do.
But a week later, I still feel it,
how I live one foot in the world
where he is not here,
one foot in the world
where everything is possible,
even togetherness,
even peace.
Lucid
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, love, mother on March 4, 2022| 13 Comments »
He was taller, having grown since his death,
and his hair needed to be washed, but here
he was, in my dream, my son, so at ease
in his body, so warm in his speech,
as if he had come for the sole purpose
of letting me know he is thriving.
We talked about what he wanted
to pass on to his children,
and I melted with relief to learn
he was looking forward to his life.
When we said goodbye, he took me in his arms
and hugged me so long, by morning,
and long after lunch, I forgot
it was a dream.
One Made in the Benevolent Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bee, darkness, dream, honey, paradox on February 18, 2022| 6 Comments »
from sweet nectar
and bitter pollen
all the honey
My Son’s First Word
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, shadow on January 29, 2022| 17 Comments »
He pointed at the grass
beneath the cottonwood tree
and said “dado.”
Shadow? I asked.
Not ball, not mama,
not cat, not dad.
Shadow.
Already at one,
he was aware of both
what is and what isn’t here—
how sometimes the light
is intercepted.
After Finn died, I dreamt
a young boy taught me
how I could help my son’s
transformation by
guiding his energy
through the shadow
of a total eclipse,
a golden corona flaming
about the circumference.
All night, certain I was awake,
I pulled luminous swirls
through the dark center, and
Finn’s energy disappeared
into the heart of the shadow,
into the light beyond.
A shadow is nothing,
of course, which is to say
it is also everything. The way
my life is now steeped
in the shadow of his life,
the way the shape of him
follows me everywhere I go.
*
this poem has been published in ONE ART
When Living on a Tiny Island
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, fire, island, letting go on December 20, 2021| 11 Comments »
It was a dream, but I tell you
everything was on fire in the house—
I knew the whole island would burn,
and I had to choose what to take
and I ran past the old records
and thought, I have those songs in me,
and I ran past the books
and thought, I have those stories,
and I ran past the photos
and thought, those memories
are already with me,
so I ran, chased by flames,
toward the ocean
with the only thing
I can really carry, this buoyant love,
and I dove in, hands empty,
able to cup the water
and pull through the tide.
The salt water lifted me,
whispered in waves: letting go
is what keeps you alive
*
Hi friends, sorry the poem is late! We had no internet last night. Happy almost solstice–I have never been so ready for the light.
Love, Rosemerry
Porosity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, dream, life, porous, soil on October 19, 2021| 10 Comments »
And so I learn I am porous—
learn I am not just dust,
but soil. Everything
moves through me.
I am not the container
I believed myself to be,
but a portion of earth
more other than self.
In a dream, I was told,
The body is permeable
to life and to death.
I want to remember
that voice. I want to remember
how it feels to be earth,
to know the self as both living
and dead.
I want to remember how absence
has never felt more holy,
how its sacredness is rivaled
only by the holiness of what’s here.
No separation, said the voice.
Remember.
I want to remember
the infinite dark inside
each infinite moment,
how both soil and time
are planted with stars.
Oh sweet teachings
that I cannot understand,
how they spiral out
like galaxies inside me,
how they slip
like loose soil through my hands.
With the Stars All Around
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, control, dream, letting go, life, sleep, trust on August 4, 2021| 5 Comments »
I wish you the peace of sleep,
your breath a canoe
that carries you
toward the next moment
without any need
for you to touch the oars.
How easily you arrive.
Oh, to trust the world like that—
trust you will be carried,
not just in sleep,
but in waking dreams,
trust no matter how high the waves,
the skiff of grace
has a seat for you.
And oh, to let go of the oars—
there is no steering
toward what comes next.
Identity Check
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, dream, identity on June 6, 2021| 2 Comments »
When they asked
for my identity card
I looked in my purse
and found someone else’s.
And someone else’s.
And someone else’s.
But not mine.
But it’s me, I said.
I turned to my friends
so they could vouch for me,
but their word was not enough
to prove I was myself.
When I woke,
I leaned deeper
into my being, my breath
giving me what no card,
no word could do.
Even the flesh is a trick.
Oh, how the morning shines.
One Feeding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cliche, dream, reality on May 30, 2021| Leave a Comment »