Our prompt for the day (optional as always) takes its cue from our gently odd resources, and asks you to write a poem based on an image from a dream. We don’t always remember our dreams, but images or ideas from them often stick with us for a very long time. I definitely have some nightmares I haven’t been able to forget, but I’ve also witnessed very lovely things in dreams (like snow falling on a flood-lit field bordered by fir trees, as seen through a plate glass window in a very warm and inviting kitchen). Need an example of a poem rooted in dream-based imagery? Try this one by Michael Collier.
Before your birth
5 April 20
0718
I knew you before I knew your mother
Many nights when I was being self indulgent I’d imagine you in my arms
Doctors told me this was not possible
The feeling of being a father haunted me, but I took solace in the words of science
During the times when I openly tried to damage my mind, your spirits sat on my shoulder and pulled me back
When I wrote my masterpieces I could feel your looks of disapproval
When I was not behaving like the man you needed to raise you, I could feel your hands directing my path
And now you both appeared on day
You both spoke
And you reminded me, in a way I’ll never understand, of our talks, inbedded in the DNA and memories of my faulty mind
