According to common wisdom, every part of a dream represents a part of the dreamer: Every villain, lover, fool, and queen; every animal, each stick of furniture, the weather, the walls … all of the symbols, colors, and images … represent various parts  of you, the dreamer. In this regard, every dream is a self portrait.

Dream report 10/2/13: I am walking with my daughter through a field. A mule is is bucking furiously, and I tell my daughter to run down hill to the shelter by the sea and to wait for me there.

Self Portrait in Dreams

I am the mother. I’ve been doing my job for so long,

I could do it in my sleep: I protect, I correct, I implore.

Run! Run! I say. Downhill to the shelter, you’ll be safe by the sea.

I am the girl. Curious, unafraid. It’s my way

to explore. Dumb mule can’t hurt me. Nothing can.

Nothing can. I whistle my tune through the dark. Then I run.

I am the field, straw-colored and stark. I stretch

and I grow, sigh out stalks of long grass.

What goes on above me, I let it all pass.

I am the mule, and I’m bucking mad,

bucking angry, bucking all that is wrong. Buck you

and buck you and buck everything, too.

I am the hill. I bow to the sea. I bow down to ease

the way for her feet. Her feet flying faster and faster

with my help she’ll be free.

I am the shelter, a simple structure of wood

Here to hold firm against the wind and the rain.

And if you’d come inside I would hold onto you, too.

I am the sea, at the foot of the hill. I’ll tickle her ankles.

I’ll hold your wondering gaze.

I’m the end of this story. The bucking stops here.

You are the mother, the mule and the field,

the girl, and the hill, the shelter, the sea. You are the dream

of all of these things—that are dreaming

of me.

© 2013 Tzivia Gover

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This poem represents the 12th poem I’ve written this month in an effort to write 30 Poems in November as part of a fundraiser for immigrant literacy. To sponsor me in my Poem-a-Day challenge, please visit: http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/Tzivia/30poems