Tag: Dreams

In the Days That Follow

walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino, May 2022

In the Days That Follow

Imagine the wrongs made right, the crooked made straight
the middle way the means to hold the center strong
the point to rise again to choose again
to act with love, to be kind.

Invoke the wisdom of ancients, angels, and ancestors
with wild words of song, and prayers whispered
over a cauldron wrought of shadowed griefs
fired by our righteous rage.

Mix equal parts beauty, truth, and justice into
an elixir made in paradox, luminescent in the dark
heaven sent on the more-than-human breath
earth bound on waves of sand and water.

Elemental formula with sacred geometry
to bravely mend and steadfastly restore
our broken hearts, a torn country,
the exhausted planet.

A work in progress, this poem coalesced the day following the US election. Like many around the world, I awoke to the news I’d hoped and prayed would be different. A brief scroll though social media and a friend’s post of an image – no words – of a tear falling down a woman’s cheek said it all.

Last night, I began reading The Dreaming Way: Courting the Wisdom of Dreams (2024), the latest book by Toko-pa Turner. An internationally recognized dreamworker and one with whom I have personally studied, Toko-pa writes, “As our dreams nudge us in step with the larger intent of nature, we grow to see how necessary we are to these troubled times.”

Describing the Dreaming Way as the practice of choosing to live in reciprocity with the inner and outer worlds, she encourages us to regularly shift our attention away from our modern, external life of reason and rationale to take seriously the imaginal world and dreaming. By doing so, we are contributing to the shifting power in the world and enacting a revolution from within.

My poem, sourced from and steeped in the richness of the imaginal world, is a homage to knowing, trusting, and valuing the necessity of walking in both worlds, my long-time way of being. Now, I recommit to paying more and regular attention to my inner life, a takeaway from my most recent long walk, and the boon of living in my eldering landscape. My life and our world depend on it.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

More Awake in Dreams


More Awake in Dreams
for June 20th

Many are more awake, with greater
abilities in dreams, than in daylight.

I walked through a world last night of
such exquisite intricacies…in my sleep
some might say.

But no, it was not really like that. It
was surely as real as any place you ever
visited.

Whatever the hand can shape and make
last…the advanced mind can do a
millionfold.

And love, there too while I slept so alert
with perceptions keen and powerful,

did I know you, love, and could more
bear your fire.

In dream, in spirit, are we not closer to
Her likeness?

– Daniel Ladinsky, A Year with Hafiz, 2011

It had been ages since I’d picked up this book, one sitting in my basket with others contemplative and poetic, and with my journal (ages, too, since I’d picked up a pen to write). But this morning – sitting in the solstice summer sunshine, cool and fresh breeze whispering through the open window, green grass and willow leaves glistening, after several minutes of quiet, reflecting on yesterday’s events, today’s to-dos, Walker occasionally peeking over the pet gate preventing his entry, wishing he could – I did.

Allowing the book to open in its way didn’t reveal an oracular resonance. Turning pages with intention to today, June 21, not quite. Yesterday, yes. That reading, today’s featured poem – Ladinsky’s rendering of Hafiz – its title struck the right chord. One amplified when I read a friend’s early morning post describing a vivid dream with her long-lost sister. (Beautifully written, dear one.)

Like many of you here, I pay attention to my dreams, having learned the value of doing so when I was in analytic therapy. I can recall ones from decades’ past, still pondering them, intuiting they continue to have richness and relevance for my life now. Again Hafiz, via Ladinsky:

“There are so many gifts
still unopened from your birthday,
there are so many hand-crafted
presents that have been sent to you by God.”

This week, two dreamt in the same night with similar “main characters,” continue to nudge my consciousness. Last year, a recurrent dream of urgently needing to catch a flight and not having packed. And over the decades, one of houses I find myself inhabiting, unique and magnificent in potential and needing a lot of work. (Your interpretations are welcome in the comments!)

My dreams both inform and have become poems. One, “The Grandfather I Never Knew,” has been recently published, along with my photography, by the beautifully curated Synkroniciti Magazine in Volume 6, Number 1, Katherine McDaniel, editor.

And those dreams where I have greater abilities than in daylight with the associated visceral feelings of exhilaration, satisfaction, freedom?  I’ve wondered how to bring forth that dream-time mastery into my day-time life. I realize how increasingly my poetry, photography, this blog, and even my personal conversations and correspondence have become the bridge across and into my eldering landscape. Heeding my dream-time grandfather’s advice.

Closing this post – one more typical of my Monday missives – as I did my early morning text to another of my dear friends:

“I’ll sign of with love for you and this summer day, for friendships near and far, those waxing and waning…the new beings who bring joy and love, and those steadfast in theirs.”

Kindest regards, dear friends.