A few nights ago, I had this great idea for a poem. The first line would be this pithy quote from Wendell Berry. From that, the images and the ideas to follow flowed out logically and easily. But I was busy and away from my desk. I thought, I know, I’ll write down the Berry quote, and when I have the time for it, the rest of the poem will flow back out prompted by the quote. So, I took out a bit of note paper and jotted it down.
Sadly, I was sound asleep and dreaming at the time and I have no idea what the quotation was, or even if it was real. The bit of note paper certainly wasn’t. This dream brought back to mind one the first poems I wrote for this blog back in September 2011. I dug it back out and spiffed it up a little.
Slipping Away
I dreamed of a slender young woman
wearing a black caftan embroidered
with coltsfoot and periwinkle.
She perched on a railway ticket counter
and sang to the clerk an astonishing song.
Its melody was achingly sweet.
Artful verses broke into a soaring chorus.
The bridge meandered back to tonic
through an odd modal twist.
The many stanzas melted away as she
sang them, but on waking, the tune
played on for a while in my memory.
I could never have sung it, lacking range.
And now even the gist is lost, leaving only
the ash of my dream, an echo of her song.
