Tag Archives: dVerse Poets

Patterns Hinted at in Dreams, for dVerse Poets

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Patterns Hinted at in Dreams

I walk down stairs into my sleep
with parts of self I need to keep.
I take them there to other places
of worn out lives, departed faces.
What would these dear ones think of me
if they were given powers to see
into this future where they’ve not gone?
While I have wandered over yon,
they have remained there behind—
away from future’s relentless grind.
Frozen there, they do not judge
or carry with them any grudge.

I am stitched  in every mind
as I was when they were left behind.
So in dreams I show them me
as though they might furnish a key
to how I’m doing now that I’ve changed.
Have I grown better as I’ve ranged
away from who I was back then?
On awakening, I take my pen
and see if I can recall reams
of words extending from my dreams.

All those adventures, all the stories
of hidden rooms and moving lorries,
ghost friends who orchestrate, it seems,
advice for me from within dreams—
kinder friends who try to wrest
the parts from me that they’ve found best.
They are my teachers, born in mist
to guide me while I can’t resist.

One alters out unneeded parts.
Another makes room for the starts
of what I could be, given time.
With innuendo, symbols, mime,
they hint at where to sew each hem
so though I barely recall them
when I awaken, still there’s a sense
that my life has grown more dense.
Just scraps of them go with me so
I have an inkling where to go
next in life. Each word I write
is a little beam of light
that reminds me, as I sew the seams,
of  patterns hinted at in dreams.

The dVerse Poets prompt is dream interpretation.

I can’t help but post this earlier blog as well, even though it is not in poetry form:

Dreaming A Path

Dream, Fri. Oct 18, 2013

We were at a booth in a café. It was a huge room with booths on every side and each booth had a clock, or at least I thought they did. I don’t think I ever looked. Our alarm started going off and there was no way to turn it off. It was by me and I tried and tried but couldn’t get it off. I said I was just going to unplug it, but Patti said perhaps it was timed with all the other clocks at tables and then it wouldn’t match. I said couldn’t they just reset it when we left? Someone agreed, but still we didn’t unplug it and it went on and on and on. Very annoying. Our booth came equipped with a little dog. It was tiny and light with long very curly white hair that was in loose corkscrew very long ringlets. It was so adorable and affectionate. I held it most of the time. It had legs like wires that went straight down..very skinny…and it jumped a lot. When the waitress came, we told her about the alarm and she said yes, she’d noticed that it was going off…but she didn’t do anything about it. We told her how cute the little dog was and she said yes…but then it seemed like it was the little dog who had the alarm that was going off. We ordered and afterwards I was wanting a dessert but thought I shouldn’t order one. Patti was to my right and I suddenly realized she was eating a very rich chocolate dessert—a sort of fudge flan or very moist slippery cake that was hot with a hot fudge sauce over it. She offered me a taste. It was a very small rectangle…not very big…but I tasted it and immediately said I’d have one, too. It was incredible. Still, the alarm went off. It was driving me crazy! Then I woke up and realized it was my own bedside alarm. I reached up with my eyes still closed and tried to turn it off, but couldn’t find the control. Finally I picked it up, opened my eyes and found the control. It was 8:10. The alarm had been going off for 10 minutes!!!!

My interpretation:

I found this dream in a folder on my computer. I have no memory at all of having dreamed it, and perhaps that distance makes it easier for me to interpret it. In a few weeks, I turn 67. For the past year, I’ve thought repeatedly about death and the fact that if I’m lucky, I probably have only 30 years left. For some reason, that awareness is very stressful. I feel a need to finish everything I’ve started and never completed. Earlier, that consisted of a lot of sorting, construction of storage spaces and weeding out of the contents of my house. That effort is ongoing. What also happened, however, is that I have an incredible drive to get everything published that has been lying around in file cabinets for many many years as well as a need to write new work and somehow disseminate it. My blog is part of that effort, as are my efforts to get all my books on Amazon and Kindle.

Seeing this dream as if for the first time, I clearly see that theme of time running out coupled by a sense of alarm that I need to do something about it. The little dog shows the attractive quality (adorable and affectionate) of finally dealing with all these loose ends—(note all his corkscrew hairs). Those wiry little legs that kept him always active certainly reflect the urgency I’ve been feeling to write write write.

One aspect of this awareness in my real life for a time consisted of my fear that I will stop breathing. This often gets me up gasping at night to run outside to try to breathe. For some reason I haven’t had any of these panic attacks since I started writing every morning. What I interpreted as a growing fear of death and a dread of ceasing to exist was perhaps a fear of not living and creating while I am alive.

I think the interplay between my sister Patti and me in the dream reflects a number of things. One is a difference in our approaches to life. I think in a way, she is more of a rule-follower and since she was my immediate pattern for most of my earlier life, I think a part of me feels this same need, but this is coupled with an equal and stronger need to create my own path in a direction unique from my two older and very competent sisters and to break a few rules to do so. At a very early age, much as I admired and imitated my sisters, I felt the need to prove myself. To find something to know that they didn’t already know. I found this route when I started venturing out at an early age to find new ground where they had not gone before me. It led me first into the homes of friends and strangers where I saw life being acted out in a manner entirely different from my own home. The road led further—to summer camp where I was a stranger to all and vice versa. I loved being the stranger. In choosing a college, I fell back on the reliability and comfort of attending the same school my sister had attended, but in my Jr. year I took my first big leap—a trip around the world on World Campus Afloat. That early adventure in seeing dozens of new and strange cultures set my life path. I’ve been traveling ever since and have been living in Mexico for the past 13 years.

I believe this dream depicts the sense of urgency I’ve had my entire life to “do” something with experience. My art and writing allow me to turn off the alarm for the hours in which I practice them. That small dessert might symbolize the rewards of doing what I need to do to do so.

P.S. An interesting insight I have had just as I started to post this: (And, interestingly enough, wordpress will not accept my blog entry. Perhaps it is insisting I add this P.S. before it does so.) I just got back to Mexico from a visit to the states wherein I visited my oldest sister Betty who is now in the depths of the world of Alzheimer’s. While I was there, she seemed increasingly distressed by the fact that she can no longer communicate, but one day as we were sitting in the living room portion of her small apartment in a managed care Alzheimer’s wing, she motioned to the middle of the floor and said, “Look a that cute little white thing there—that fluffy little white dog!” This was the first incidence that I know of of her actually hallucinating visually, and for some reason it popped into my mind in relation to the little dog in my dream. All of these images—of our dreams as well as our daily life—remind us to live while we can and to do what is most important to us. In my case as well as my sister’s—to communicate. Too late for her, although she continues to try. Not too late for me.

P.S.S.  By the way, the instant I completed the above P.S., the wordpress page that had continued to not allow me to post this blog entry flashed the message:  What do you want to post?  Text? Picture?  I chose text and and you have just read it.

For dVerse Poets, Jan 6, 2026

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Down in Grandma’s Cellar

Sleeping over at Grandma’s, her rooms all stuffed with treasure
there for my explorations, their pillaging my pleasure.
The barn so full and shadowed with pigeons, mice and more,
I did not venture farther than to peek in through the door.
But the basement was forbidden, so I overcame my fear.
To test my new maturity, I had to venture near.

Down in Grandma’s cellar, I could not see the stars.
There weren’t any planets like Jupiter or Mars.
But still it was as dark as night. The light from one mere candle
seemed the only light the ghosts who lived down there could handle.
As I creaked down the ladder rungs, glass rattled on the shelves
as though the time-dulled canning jars told stories on themselves.

Rhubarb on the nearest shelves, peaches in the back.
Watermelon pickles seemed poised for the attack,
swaying on the upper shelves, dusted by the years.
I gathered up my courage, pushing down my fears.
So many eyes caught in the dark––glassy gleaming sprites
waiting there to satisfy the family’s appetites.

But no one came to gather them and spread them on a plate.
The waste of it was senseless—their empty, useless fate.
How many hours she’d labored to gather nature’s fruit.
How many other hours used up in the pursuit
of washing, peeling, cutting, and packing them in glass,
packing them in cauldrons and boiling them en masse.

Where did the hungry mouths go? Why did they go untasted?
What happened all those years ago that their richness was wasted?
Accustomed to the secrets kept hidden behind blinds,
we kids retained the questions that stirred our tiny minds.
So many of these mysteries lie hidden in my past.
Remarkable how long their spreading shadows seem to last.

 

For dVerse Poets  our prompt was to use 3 poems by Elizabeth Bishop as examples colored by our own poetic voice to take the reader to a place, a person and an occasion, incorporating  accuracy of detail, spontaneity, immediacy and mystery to write our own original poem. 

“Abundance” for dVerse Poets

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Abundance

How can we approach “abundant”
without resorting to “redundant?”
We must simply have the gall
to search for the original
instead of coming in the door
with something we have bought before––
like “Beanie Babies” by the score.

What if, everywhere we went,
we looked for something different?
So when we chose a friend anew,
they had a different point of view?
From countryside or town or city,
be it huge or itty-bity––
just choose someone you find witty

and mine their mind for something new
that can grow a part of you
that’s different from what came before––
that can open up a door
within your heart, within your mind
of that place where you can find
beliefs of a matching kind.

For dVerse Poets prompt: Abundant

( I know I’m not supposed to be blogging. The dVerse Devil made me do it…_

Thanksgiving, for dVerse Poets

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Thanksgiving

Speeding toward the old year’s end,
we express our thanks for the past year’s treasures––
pathways that we chose to wend.
And each friend whose love endures,
we invite to share in our table’s pleasures.

 

The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a Lire poem: 7, 11, 7, 7, and 11  syllables.
Rhyme Scemer: aBabB. Suggested topic is November or Thanksgiving.

Two Will Do

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Two Will Do

I used to like friends by the score
squeezed wall-to-wall and door-to-door.
A party didn’t even count
until the guests began to mount
up to sixty, seventy, more.
But now, I’m finding crowds a bore.

Now I find that two-by-two
is something I prefer to do.
Conversations more intimate
make it simpler to relate.
So though I used to be a grouper,
now I’m just a party-pooper.

for dVerse Poets, the prompt is Number.

If I Were Water and You Were Air for dVerse Poets

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If I Were Water & You Were Air

I used to be restless water―
only the froth and currents
of a moving life.

Now I am still water,
sinking down to where
I can be found
by anyone willing to stand quietly
and look.

Is it true that moving water never freezes?
Is it true that still waters run deep?
Is it true that we are wed in steam?

“What if, caught by air,
it never lets me go?” I ask.
“But even water
turned to air
must fall at last,” you say.

“And what if I fall farther from you?” I say.
“Or what if I never again find banks
that open to contain me?”

I used to be swift flowing water.
Now I am a pool that sinks me deeper every year.
So deep, so deep I sink
that on its way to find me,
even air may lose its way.

Our dVerse Poets prompt today is to consider the opening line from a poem from one of my favorite poets, Edna St Vincent Millay. The Poem is “Love Is Not All,” and the line is:
“Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink nor slumber nor a roof against the rain.” As a response, I’m sharing the title poem from my newly published book of poems.

 

The Blade of Grief for dVerse Poets Chaucerian Roundel

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 The Blade of Grief

The loss of one with whom our life was built
will come to be the loss of our life, too,
We view the rest of life without a clue.

The blade of grief thus buried to its hilt,
we hope that it will do what such blades do,
The loss of one with whom our life was built,
will come to be the loss of our life, too.

We view our hopes for death with little guilt,
for death is that new love we hope to woo.
We seek no other lover that is new.
The loss of one with whom our life was built
will come to be the loss of our life, too.
We view the rest of life without a clue.

For dVerse Poets Chaucerian Roundel

To read other roundels created for this prompt, go HERE.

Hidden Treasure for dVerse Poets

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Hidden Treasure

We are the ones that dwell within,
and what we keep hidden from each other
forms the mystery that keeps us coming back for more.
Like the relish that enhances the main course.
Like the dessert at the end of the meal,
not the real nourishment, but rather
a reward for putting up with the day-to-day
ragtag repetitions, irritations, boredoms
of knowing each other so well.
The loyalties, down to the heart honesties,
those passions held in common, those trials shared
are the meals we feed each other day-by-day.
But what person does not need, as well,
the thrill of the unopened package,
the darkness hidden under the stairs?

“Where we’re going, we don’t need eyes to see” – Sam Neill, Event Horizon (1997)
“We are the ones that dwell within” – The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
“Thrill me” – Night of the Creeps (1986) These are the three lines I chose for dVerse Poets

  Above are the three sentences I chose for the dVerse Poets promt. Let’ see which won out.

A Modern Tale, for dVerse Poets

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A Modern Tale

Beware the headless horseman. He knows not where he’s going.
For without his brain or senses, he cannot be knowing
north from south or here from there. In fact it’s rather hopeless.
Instead of coping with his journey, he’s completely copeless.

Better to have a head man who hasn’t any horse,
for he can find another vehicle to aid his course
here and there and every where that he seeks to go,
for his brain can lead him, be his progress fast or slow.

Headless horsemen are, I fear, mostly made-up tales,
like the  one by Washington Irving, which, I admit, pales
compared to the real-life tale of that living gent
who is a headless horseman and sadly, our president!!!

The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a poem about a headless horseman.

An October Horror Story, for dVerse Poets

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An October Horror Story: Hollow E’en

They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall.
One climbs a tree to peer within. I hope he doesn’t fall.
I cower here within my house and pray they’ll go away.
Though I am not religious, eventually I pray.

Their little voices raise a pitch. They start to bay and howl.
There’s a flutter in my heart region, a clutching in my bowel.
I purchased Reese’s Pieces and miniature Kit Kats
just for all these masked and costumed little brats.

My motives were unselfish. The candy was for them,
for I don’t eat much candy in efforts to grow slim.
And yet that bag of Reese’s, those small Kit Kats and such
called to me from where they were sequestered in my hutch.

It started with a whisper, hissing out their wish:
“We would look so pretty laid out on a dish!”
I knew that they were evil. I knew it was a trap.
I tried hard to resist them, my hands clenched in my lap.

I turned up my computer, listening to “The Voice.”
Those candy bars would not be seen till Halloween—my choice!
My willpower was solid. No candy ruled me.
(If that were true, no kids would now be climbing up my tree.)

Yes, it is true I weakened. I listened to their nags.
I took the candy from the shelf and opened up the bags.
Their wrappers looked so pretty put out for display
In one big bowl so colorful, lying this-a-way

and that-a-way, all mixed and jumbled up together.
No danger of their melting in this cooler weather.
I put them on the table, then put them on a shelf
so I would not be tempted to have one for myself.

When people came to visit, I put them by my bed.
Lest they misunderstand and eat them all instead.
Then when I was sleeping, one tumbled off the top.
I heard it landing with a rustle and a little “plop.”

I opened up one eye and saw it lying there
just one inch from where I lay, tangled in my hair.
Its wrapper was so pretty—foiled and multi-hued.
Some evil force took over as I opened it and chewed!

This started a small avalanche of wrappers on the floor
as I ripped and stuffed & chewed & swallowed more & more & more!
This story is not pretty but has to be confessed.
My only explanation is that I was possessed.

They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall,
but I have no candy for them. No treat for them at all.
Surrounded by the wrappers, bare bowl upon my lap,
I think I’ll just ignore them and take a little nap.

I hear them spilling o’er my wall and dropping down inside.
I try to think of what to do. Consider suicide.
They’re coming in to get me. Beating down my door.
They are intent on blood-letting—the Devil’s evil spore.

I guess it’s not the worst death a gal could ever get.
I’ve heard of much worse endings than death by chocolate!

The dVerse Poets prompt is “October.