Tag: dreams

It’s 1952 Again

Barbara Kaufmann2 Comments

We’re transplants from the clotted streets of Brooklyn to a brand new tract home next to a Long Island farm. We spend the summer catching tadpoles in giant jars of stream water. We watch them turn into slippery and hard-to-grasp toads. This place is idyllic, perfect. But only for a minute.

Darkness sets in along with a tightness in my chest.  The muck on the bottom of the stream grows like something in a horror movie. My feet are stuck  but I break away, heart pounding. 

Looking back, my best friend Johnny is caught in the muck. He turns into an enormous tadpole and I watch him disappear into the murky water. I scream his name until my mother comes. The only word I hear her say is polio.

falling from a tree the blue of a robin’s egg

Grandmother’s Pearls : An Anthology of Dream Poems

ed. Alexis Rotella

Published 2021

Dreamer

Barbara Kaufmann5 Comments

****

The Dreamer:

Awake, my child 
come out to play with me
in the universe –
we can laugh at the gurgling brook
and sing with the mockingbird,
I know you heard my owl last night
you took delight in the hooo…hooo…hoo -ing
even as you slumbered on…
Did you know, I took delight in your delight?

The Child:

Oh Dreamer! Let me  drop everything
to come out to play with you,
show me every star in every galaxy,
I want to  fly through the sky
with the birds and the bees,
roll in the soft cool grass
and cover myself with cherry blossoms,
What a playground you have made for me!
Am I awake or asleep, Dreamer?

The Dreamer (laughing) :

It doesn’t matter, my child,
because, awake or asleep,
you are a dreamer,
just like me.

****
©2014 Wabi Sabi

My Head is Beating with Wishes

Barbara Kaufmann29 Comments
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My head is beating with wishes
said the great King Ginevra,
they are straight out of the costume dispenser,
where the clouds are made of Paris,
the day is made of swirling capes to wear on the cusp of morning,
 air is peppermint  basil to go  with a bite of  sunlight,
 blue mangoes and frozen kiwis,
so let’s sail around in the Caribbean, full of smiling fish,
 bring the owl  who ate too many toads and now is made of ribbits,
he smells like a knock- knock joke and sings with the rubberized cow.
 
King Ginevra goes to look for a painted mermaid hanging in the sky,
and roams the nighttime ocean,
  cawing birds follow him down the drowsy hole
and they float to the  Eiffel Tower without a single band-aid emergency.
He returns early in the morning, 
 drinking  banana tea with honey,
and eating a bacon muffin too.
 
Soon after breakfast, the great King Ginevra decides
that the theme for today is jungle.
 
Head still beating with wishes, he scoots on over
to ride the Q train to the popcorn zoo
or maybe to the moon.
 
****
©2013 Wabi Sabi
 

Happy Father”s Day to all fathers (and mothers) who encourage their children to dream, wish and imagine!

For Poets United ‘poetry pantry’

For Recuerda Mi Corazon ‘postcards from paradise’

For d’Verse ‘Open Link Night’