Dreams And Dreams Come Back To Me

Dreams and dreams come back to me
when I awaken with their threads
like cobwebs feathering past my face.
The visions of lost cities fade quickly,
but an after-image of emotions flutters
behind eyelids. When I close my eyes
I can barely make out faces and places.

Dreams and dreams come back to me
when the aftertaste of some exotic fruit
reminds me of another nibbled
in paradise and left half-eaten;
when some bittersweet bite of strange curry
brings back a tantalizing taste of a dreamed cuisine
that brought tears to my eyes with its spiciness,
or when some whipped delicacy
whispers to my taste buds, “You’ve been here before, “
and the flavor of ambrosia from the Tír na nÓg
of childhood rushes back from its lost corner.
These were never in reality
but the real can call them into being,
as if the dream were a seed of the future
that now I stumble upon, newly discovered.

Dreams and dreams come back to me
as legs bounding over some building or puddle,
jack-knife in a spasm that kicks the covers off
landing me back in my room, in my own slumbering bed
and I shiver from the fright of what horror I escaped;
yet already the nightmare is washed away
leaving only a cramp in my left calf.

Dreams and dreams come back to me
yet too many dreams are forgotten,
As the echoes of the last one ring in my ears,
the voices that jerked me back to reality
or awoke me with a gasp
now shake the silence with their presence.
I don’t know which is worse:
the remembering or the forgetting.