Tag Archives: dream

Drifting Off

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I close my eyes
I turn my sights inside
It’s quiet here, and dark
and undefined
And in the open space
my mind
begins to map
its cryptic pictures on the outward sounds

Before I know it
it has rolled another landscape
across the blank terrain of empty thought
from which then sounds and voices may emerge
And so the dream is woven
and I’m caught
into a world which may enchant,
may teach
Or keep its latent wisdom out of reach.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 7, 2012


Dream Dancing

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While you’re dancing
on the other coast
I am dreaming
not yet in sleep
though I should be—
dreaming of dancing
not in rooms but in galaxies
currents of cosmos swirling
under and around
curling and flourishing 
at light speeds
where distance is no object
and time not either
and our streaming together
sends great sparks
across that dome that we have called the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 20, 2012


Gardens

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So many things in my garden are bolting

Racing against death
Preparing a dual departure:
Packaging their life into capsules for the future,
Letting their stalks fall back into brown

In the face of my neglect
The plants perform their dramas
Weeds stake out their turf
Flowers stretch and bow extended stems
Bees and rain bestow their ministrations

Some year, I think, my garden may be tended
Each tender plant well fed
with soil amended,
The weeds, with gentle firmness
kept in hand
The flowers celebrated, blooming
lushly, just as planned

But I’m distracted by another realm
Where, like fennel weeds
My dreams extend their gangly fronds
And wave about, seedy and untended
When I visit them, I have no clue
Which ones to pull, which ones to prune
Or what to do to garner greater flourish

So neither garden gets my full attention
And both grow wild, and dry, and spare
But still, in both, the sun-drenched flowers
Summon me, and touch me there.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 26, 2012



Dreamscapes

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I offer today an old poem – from May, 1987.  I still find it amazing that, when I start to think about dreams I’ve had, memory upon memory of dream sites come to me.  In my dreams they are familiar places, yet I don’t know how many times I’ve visited them.  Only once, but with embedded memories of many times? Or repeatedly, given how familiar they feel?  I’m quite sure at least some of them don’t exist anywhere but in my dreams. They parade before me, one after another, dreamscapes perhaps based on real-life places, but changed enough that I can’t match them up.  That half unreal feeling of dream memories was what I was trying to capture in this poem:
Back Into Dream
Seeing my bare foot stepping ahead on the dock
In afternoon sun
I remember dreaming of wind chimes
The colors of the dream are lit
With different light from those of day
The dark behind the gold
The light within, not from afar.
I find in dreams
A different balance
Lying on my side while walking
Curling smoke-like under doors.
I take grand jumps
Sometimes truly fly.
New power down the insides of my arms,
New currents through my fingers
Long after I wake
The shadow tugs
Drags the corners of my vision out of square
Puts wrinkles in my day
I travel back
In sliding leaps
Inward and sidelong
Through time
Rolling under like surf
Along the large cliffs by the sea
Down the distant inlet once again
Soaring home to the memory 
Of the dream.

©Wendy Mulhern