Houses in dreams are said to represent the Self: Windows for eyes, doors representing what you are letting in or locking out, and so on.

Lucid dreamers often have a dream house through which they enter the aware state of dream lucidity, in which they know they are dreaming while they are dreaming.

But as always, the only correct interpretation of a symbol is the one that works for you.

Lately I’ve been dreaming about houses with no walls. I feel oddly safe and happy in these houses where snow drifts in the living room, and there’s nothing keeping traffic noises or passersby out.

I have recurring dreams about the house I grew up in: An elegant white stucco house on a corner lot in a middle class neighborhood on Long Island.

Instead of interpreting the dreams, I often turn them into poems. Here’s one of my favorites:

The Return

Ants eat azaleas growing

Beneath the sign: Dead

End. A house cradled on such

A corner couldn’t promise.

I creep home through broken

Branches. Yellow grass springs

Tall. Mail stacks up on the stoop,

Still addressed to me. There

Is my father. Waiting.

© Tzivia Gover 2005 Dream House
"The Return" was originally published in MALACHITE AND AGATE, 1997.