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Sunday, October 23, 2005 |
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POWER OF DREAMS They were blessing the new-plowed fields. Mr. and Mrs. Page (real-life community elders here, wealthy farmers, proprietors of the local grocery store) figured prominently in these events, small plump figures smiling and welcoming in their power. It wasn't like this was something that happened every year, in the dream. More like—I'd finally put years enough into this community to see it all unfold. The Pages brought their animals. Goats and bucks were penned together, stallions put out with the mares. Mrs. Page cautioned me away from the field: the stallions could be dangerous now. In one little pasture the fall lambs had been born already, tens of them tiny and new. In our barn suddenly every compartment, every section and pen was full-up with livestock. Starting at one end of the building and making my way to the other I passed into and through room after room of animals put together to breed, pigs and cows and goats and chickens. I pressed on past the warm beautiful animals, the green rectangle bales of alfalfa hay. Manure of the ages was layered so deep some places I had to bend down under the rafters as I passed. It was solid and hard and dry as earth. I had to climb up and out of the building through a high window, and into the house where humans lived. I found this easy to do; I swung up and out using rafters as handholds, as though I were still eleven years old. Oh the breath of the cows, their broad moist noses. The stallions black as pitch, powerful and frightening in rut. Women worked all around. Old women labored over quilts. (I paused briefly to imagine myself trying to make one, how I'd use squares so tiny no scrap of cloth would ever go to waste, and I wondered whether I could stitch the lengths of connected squares using the my treadle sewing machine, with its old bullet bobbin, whether I could keep the seam straight, would take the time and have the patience to load the bobbin again and again and finish the project...) The young wives were gestating and planning their gardens. Little girls were everywhere, serious, curious, playful and strong. (I was eating ice cream in a quiet room as a little girl in the corner stared at me. I felt guilty but I kept eating; it was so good. Maybe I'd give her the last bite....) My exhusband Gary was all through the dream, trying to come back to me, clutching a sheaf of his poems. I overheard Mr. Page say, "He's crazy, that one. He's certifiable." The river was running high, and so broad you couldn't see the other side of it. The men and boys hauled in the big fishes, competing. As he helped me attach it to a hook, Mr. Page laughed at the bait I'd chosen. I said I didn't care whether I caught what everyone else was catching that day. I just wanted to catch what I caught. Then I was riding down out of there on something, some vehicle that seemed more like a cool hummock, a little grassy mound, downhill toward the broad river. Instead of turning onto the road that ran alongside it, I felt compelled to continue onto the mud flat, the dark new minerals laid down by the flooding river. But what seemed solid and unmoving was actually part and parcel of the rising river now, and it moved forward with great power, a locomotive of mud. For a while I struggled and fought to reach the shore again, but it was impossible, and the momentum carried me on my little hill toward a horizon I dared not even look toward. 1:40:27 PM  comment []
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