STRIKING POSES (photo) & BRANCHES (dream narrative) by Roswila

BRANCHES

when I finally reach Dad late at night by cell
to find out how he's doing home alone in this storm
it's clear he's been drinking, a fact I note with a sad
passing sigh and go on to listen to his anxious
questioning of my whereabouts

I tell him I'd been taking down trees that the storm
was about to topple anyway, me, just muscling
them over in all that wet and dark and wind,
adding that at least my doing it first meant
there was some control over where
the three trees would crash

Dad's anxiety goes up a notch as he asks
if it was legal to shove those trees over myself,
instead of letting the storm do it;
I assure him they were just about to topple
anyway, and only he and I know I did it,
so it's really a non-issue

he's not much mollified as I go on to describe
the trees now flattened into the rain soft ground:
two southwestern types and the third, a huge
dark, spreading, northeastern beauty,
the first rough trunk I'd had to shove,
the hardest to budge, and the one
whose silhouette against a sunset I'll miss most

I describe how the three trees looked just before
I'd started shoving them over by flashes
of lightning: like a huge brain scan, neural branch
after neural branch of connections crisscrossing
each other, live wires firing up as the storm's
energy rushed instantly through them

Dad grunts lightly, I've lost his interest as usual
when I wax poetic, and we say our good-byes;
as I close my old flip top cell I chew over a wish
that I could as readily make an end to those
deeply tangled brain branches of my own,
those neural pathways grown and reinforced over
a lifetime that fire up at the slightest fear,
burning out whatever new connections
I've been building, yet one more time


[narrative on a dream of 5-13-16. "Dad" was my actual father in the dream. He was an alcoholic, and Dad was what I called him. Photo "Striking Poses" (5-2-16 009v3) by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers, as the above is), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

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until next time, keep dreaming,

[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.