Caught up in our nightmares
Of what may, or may not occur,
We forget the beautiful sunset
And that the earth in the wood
Smells good when wet.
Living in fear
We fail to hear
When birds sing.
Our spring
Is so brief.
Nightmare’s teeth
Pierce our hearts.
Yet we have art
And nature’s beauty
Ere we depart
Into that sleep
Where we are unaware
Of beauty or nightmare.
In my dreams
It often seems
To me
That what I feel
And sometimes see
Is reality.
When death steals
Up on me
Will it simply seem
That I dream?
The reality
Is unknowable to me.
I am a rational man.
Ghosts and ghouls are for fools.
But, at boarding school
Was it pipes at night
Which slowly cooled
And housemasters whose shoes squeaked
And made floors creak?
Or ghastly ghouls?
Sometimes at night I delight
In tales of vampires.
But, when I retire
I feel the creeping chill
Of imagined hands.
And no man can command
What may come in dreams.
I dreamed a dream of delight
On a warm spring night
And when I awoke
My conscience spoke.
It said, “dreams are not crimes,
But when a poet rhymes
In his art
You see his heart”.
As for me
I must practice ambiguity
In my poetry
Lest my art
Reveal my secret heart.
When I go away
Perchance my verse will stay
And some will upbraid me
For my poor poetry
And the crime
Of ambiguous rhyme …
I wonder, when I die,
If it be in dream,
Will it seem
That I lie
Abed,
In perpetual dream?
I
Must take care
That my head
Is empty of all nightmare,
Lest, when I am dead
I, forever, dream.
K Morris - Poet 