I dreamed I was running

I dreamed that I was running. It felt good,

uphill a little on a path around the wood.

My legs were strong, my heart didn’t beat the way

a watch counts out the nervous pulse of day.

Where was I going? Or who running from?

Was I running alone in a Hopperscape,

warm, not hot, easing to a teasing horizon,

or fleeing shadows of lurking threats?

The vision, the feeling, evaporate.

I dreamed that I was running, terrified.

Our shelter had been shattered that night,

explosions and predators and treachery,

and only splintered walls and rusting beams to hide us.

Who was attacking? Or who protecting

from missiles and experimental aircraft

raining innovative destruction through azure air?

The vision, the feeling, evaporate

except the fleeting memory of running.

Cynthia G. Wagner, May 2, 2022

For Tom

Message on old phone:

she hoped he got home OK.

Nightmare redialed.

Haiku: untitled (dream sequence 2)

Goodbye dreams, fakers,
glad to see the back of your
Mickey Mouse ear world.

Haiku: Morning

Morning

Memories and dreams

evaporate, making way

as new moments wake.

-----------------------

Annotation: This is slightly revised from the version I posted on Facebook yesterday, but it still doesn't quite satisfy. Due to an unexplained shift in my REM cycle, I've been dreaming closer to when I'm supposed to wake up, so the images are lasting longer. The music and news from the radio alarm mix themselves into a dream-soundtrack, and I remember my dream images of crashing planes and refugees.

The thing about dreams and memories is that they play on the same psychic field. Am I remembering that correctly, or did I dream it? As I've gotten older, I'm finding it harder to remember my dreams. I'm finding it harder to remember my memories. I'm sad when I forget the song I composed and sang in a dream, but I'm sadder when I forget experiences that really happened. 

The time between both dreams and experiences and their evaporation is getting shorter with the amount of time ahead for new ones to wake.

love, hosaa

remembering dreams, at least temporarily.

Garden art, Strathmore Mansion (Bethesda). Credit: C. G. Wagner

"It's a Wonderful Proof of Life"

copyright 2010 C. G. Wagner

Sometimes I wish we lived in an age where I could commission a poet to describe what I've seen or experienced. (For instance, what about that one songbird that has claimed the uppermost branch of a tree on my street and cheers me every morning? I can't make out what he is, his colors darkened against the morning East.)

But that would be like hiring a stunt double for my soul.

Anyway, I probably don't want anyone, poet or psychoanalyst, peering into the mind behind the visions and the dreams. A screenwriter might be good, though.

The dreams that I remember, though the imagery evaporates quickly into shadows with my morning songbird, are often intensely action-filled, like "24," and strangely magical. It's as though I'd conjured a perfect mashup, with Russell Crowe's character "Terry" in Proof of Life cast as "Clarence" the angel in It's a Wonderful Life.

And my dreams are often populated by strangers. Who was the baby sister that "Terry" and I were trying to protect from the cartel in my dream last night? I don't have a baby sister. Could it have been Angelea from America's Next Top Model or that pill-popping former Miss USA who was on the Oprah show that repeated last night before I finally went to sleep? And could the villainous head of the cartel, operating from a high-tech brothel/carnival funhouse, have been Mr. Trump?

The random visions and ideas we are exposed to during the day try to organize themselves somehow into a narrative at night. It means nothing, really. So I'll just pass the nighttime popcorn and enjoy the "Wonderful Proof of Life."

love, hosaa
dreaming again

Speaking of mashups, for your entertainment... The Right Sh-Stuff: