Last night,
I dreamt of making sense,
parts of speech caught up in sheets
and blankets, long strips of fabric
wrapped loosely around shoulders,
goblets, urns, cups with unmatched saucers.
You were there, and the past seemed important,
what was said, what was done,
feelings felt but maybe not expressed,
signs randomly connected
yet vital to what comes next,
to a coming season,
next year’s trip to Nauset Beach.
I woke up wanting to read a poem by that name,
and I found one with a lifeguard’s chair,
a broken shell, gulls watching egrets,
home an ocean away.
Copyright @ 2014 by Michael Broder. Used with permission of the author.
“I wanted the poem to enact the dream it purports to recount. If dreams are wish fulfillment, then this dreamer yearns for some kind of cognitive coherence. The sense the dreamer seeks turns out to be nonsense, and yet poetry finds a way of making it sensible after all.”
—Michael Broder