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Sunday 17 July 2011

A Hare's Breath - it's all that lies between death and salvation.

What do you do with your dream, such a dream
as an everynight dream
which you know without fail
you will dream, and you know
as you dream it, you're dreaming?

It's easy to think it more than a dream,
to call it prophetic, believe
that it's coded perhaps, so perhaps
there's a force, a power in the world,
abroad in the world, that would want you to crack it.

Or perhaps you can change it... well,
so much the better
for you - for you know at each point, what's to come.
Perhaps you can change what you'll do -
or, better yet, break it:
decide at some point to wake up.

You are stranded, you see
on a bridge that's too long
for the dream, that goes on,
that you know will go on -
will be going on - when you wake.

But you're wrong. When you wake
it has gone - though it's still going on
in your mind. You walk through it.
The notions, emotions and thoughts are the same;
the atmosphere, feelings and fearings are there,
they go with you into the day.
They'll all have their say
in the way that the day will pan out.

But back in the dream,
on the bridge that's too long for the dream to contain it,
the bridge that's so long you never can walk to the end,
at first there are people.
You're one of a crowd,
but each step you take takes one from the dream,
one from the bridge - for the sake of the dream -
out of the picture. Vamooshed.
Disappeared.

One has gone off in a puff of white smoke,
one in the beak of a bird,
then the parapet beckons and one will have jumped.
Another has gone in a great gust of wind
and one has just melted away.

And at last you're alone on the bridge that has run
like a ridge through the hills of the night.
Look over the edge where a wild sea churns,
then over again where the cold earth burns,
but wherever you look and whatever is there,
good and evil fly like a hare
configured for you at the time of your birth -
the good and the evil of you on the earth.

And there in the sighs of your personal hare
is all that remains of the fine arts and verse,
so follow the hare to the end of the dream -
but when you awake, the roles will reverse:
the hare will shadow you back to your birth.

14 comments:

jabblog said...

Dreams like these haunt our days as well as our nights. I don't like such 'waking' dreams.
I like the structure of this poem and the internal rhymes and near rhymes. Lovely work:-)

Brian Miller said...

whew quit the dream...and yet they do tend to follow you around...some really nice word play dave

Bagman and Butler said...

That is a wonderful poem and dream -- and observations on dreaming - that you can change them, that they follow you. I try not to interpret much but treat them more like some undiscovered country in my mind.

Louise said...

I think this is my fav poem from you - I love the control and lack thereof - dreams are our minds reality mixed together in a bowl which visits in sleep, and within it, there are more truths than we care to admit!

Mary said...

This is quite a dream, Dave. You had me following right along, wanting to see where the dream would lead. Your poem triggered memories of some of my old repetitive dreams...thank goodness they've ended.

Rose said...

An interesting read with a good twist! ('the good and the evil of you on the earth' and 'the hare will shadow you back to your birth') a hare's breath away indeed!

CiCi said...

Some dreams take so much energy that you are tired when you wake up, and unable to shake the remains of the dream.

Windsmoke. said...

Sounds to me like a haunting nightmare dream that never goes away :-).

Carl said...

Not sure I would want that dream more than once.

In the end we are alone with the choices we make. If only you could dream a nice cozy pub into the dream... A dream within the nightmare...

Isabel Doyle said...

this sounds like intimations of mortality

your nightmarish bridge crosses many an abyss

a fine poem
Isabel x

Dave King said...

jabblog
They spill over, certainly. Thanks for the comments on the structure and rhymes. Much appreciated.

Brian
Thanks for that. They don't come as often these days as once they did.

Bagman and Butler
Your last sentence particularly resonates with me. I see them as exactly that; an undiscovered country. Reassuring somehow, to know that I have company.

120 Socks
You are right. I did try to engineer a controlled lack of control(!). And yes, I am sure that is very true also: that there are more truths there than we care to admit - or are able to uncover, I think.

Mary
Thank you for those reassuring words. It's good to get them out of the system sometimes!

Rose
The hare's breath was my very last contribution to the tale.

TechnoBabe
It is true at times, it has certainly been true for me in the past, though it is some time since I've had the sort of dream that leaves one physically tired.

Windsmoke
I didn't think of it as a nightmare, exctly, back when it was a nightly occurence. The hare seemed a friendly enough daemon.

Carl
I might try that, if the opportunity presents itself - In which case, I'll let you know. You're right, though, in the matter of our choices.

Isabel
Thank you for the reassurance. It was actually a very mixed dream.

Jenny Woolf said...

Don't like this kind of dream at all. To me it sounds like being alive. I mean, it stretches forward and backward and nobody else really stays on the bridge with you. A dream about the essential aloneness of being alive. I think I've had dreams like that but luckily they don't tend to repeat.

Dave King said...

Thanks Jenny
I have to agree that it's not my favourite kind of dream, but I've had worse!

Eileen T O'Neill ..... said...

Dave,

I enjoyed the meander through this dreaminess.
It is never easy, to retrace the real root of any dream, I have found.
A dead end.........

Eileen