WHERE'S ALL THE AQUA GOING? (photomorph) & DREAMING OF MERMAIDS (free verse dream poem) by Roswila

DREAMING OF MERMAIDS

... and so, she falls asleep asking her dreams
for help, and strange as it may seem, she needs
to know what it is she most wants in life:

all night long – even when broken by
waking moments (as her sleep always has
been, from earliest childhood) – she finds
she’s dressing for a new role she’ll be
taking on: that of a mermaid

at least she thinks it’s a mermaid, the various
accoutrements available to her are not complete
(how she even knows this, she’s not certain, but
she does know it) no matter how many times she
wakes, falls back to sleep, and puts them on again,
and she’s surrounded by aqua colored light, that’s
cool and moves gently like liquid when she moves

then there’s that other woman, that almost
friend of hers, who’s also transitioning: if you’ll
pardon the use of a term used a lot these days
in another context … or maybe not really …
changing from human to non-human is a rather
huge change and certainly worthy of the term
transitioning

and each time she wakes, she’s deeply sad,
wanting only to go back to the time of transition,
to live in that world with her new friend -- yes,
the friend’s turning into a mermaid, too --
swimming together in an aqua sea


[free verse poem on a dream of 1-20-20. 😊 Sounds like a desire to return to the womb, to me! And, truthfully, I’m rarely as physically comfortable in bed as I was that night. The temperature was just right, and my joints calmed down a lot sooner than usual and stayed that way. So comfortable, that I kept re-setting my alarm in order to sleep some more. As to this dream being a possible answer to what do I most want? (I did actually incubate that issue before sleep.) That’s a bit complicated to answer. I’ve always related to the fairytale “The Little Mermaid.” And as I matured, I began to get upset with her choice to give up her tail. Yet what have I done with how I’ve lived but given up my own tail (i.e. legs)? Rather literally. The arthritis is bad enough now (along with vertigo) that I use a walker all the time. And can’t take long walks anymore. Or maybe, the dream is simply pointing out the obvious: I want to live in fantasy. Something I’ve tended to do my entire life. Well, if that’s the case, I can be grateful that I still have what I most want and have always done best: to wander around in my imagination. However, I’ve often wondered if one loses one’s fertile imagination when dementia enters the picture. Like, how do we know what a demented person thinks/feels/imagines? Is there still a lively universe behind that troubled and disappearing connection to the shared universe of interpersonal interactions? Yeah, obvious here, isn’t it: the thought of losing my ability to imagine is very upsetting. And living in a community of elders, many of whom are in various stages and types of dementia, can make one hyper aware of any slip of one’s own memory, or speech, etc. There’s more to this, but I’d better quit here. That “more” having to do with individual perceptions that get accepted as reality, and how memory is not unchangeable. Well, maybe I needn’t worry since it’s all a big constantly shifting energy mass anyway. Any stability is an accident and/or illusion, and at most, only temporary. Yikes! See what dreaming of mermaids can do to me? Photomorph “Where’s All The Aqua Going?” 6-28-09 2988v5b[3]) 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 or contrasting 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), 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.

* * * *

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.