Dream Dreams, then Write
Them, aye – but Live them First²
A Dream gives merit to a state of
Being, rather than the Ordering of
Time – the Dream, Correcting time³
Gather out of Star-dust, Earth-dust,
Cloud-dust, and splinters of Hail, one
Handful of Dream-Dust – not for sale⁴
He Dreams, who Shapes the Suns and
Pillars the Blue Firmament with Light⁵
Angels Wonder at we who Fall so regularly
Out of awareness into a Fantasm-Infected Dark⁶
Our Dreams, as waves of the Deep Sea far from
Any shore, come & go, rise & fall, profound &
Harmless: Break Nowhere, Change Nothing⁷
The Dream Grail Found as if in dreams is
Not as it had been Dreamed when Found⁸
Dreams are naught but Flow’rs of Air:
Why work so hard at Grasping them?⁹
The Rift between Dreams & Reality
Causes no harm if only the dreamer
Believes seriously in his Dream¹⁰
¹ Laura Hershey, Dream of a Different Woman
² Samuel Eliot Morison, on a monument on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
³ David Ryan, Reliquary
⁴ Langston Hughes, Comment on Curb
⁵ Edwin Markham, The Man with the Hoe
⁶ Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince
⁷ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
⁸ Alan Dugan, On Finding the Meaning of “Radiance”
⁹ Seng Tsan tr. Rochester Zen Center, Affirming Faith in Mind
¹⁰ Dmitry Pisarev, Blunders of Immature Thought