Someone Remembered Snow Cones In My Dream

to Ray Bradbury, for the story “To The Chicago Abyss”

someone remembered snow cones in my dream

a person I had never seen in real life

how funny I have often thought

the distinction between dreams and real life

except that in dreams you don’t pay bills

or trudge up hills that make your muscles ache

but to get back to the snow cone

it was brought up in a casual way

and I knew out of everyone in the room

the dream room, I was the only one there

who knew why the man spoke of it and that it mattered

because he wanted to remember that

and not the original topic of conversation

which the dream did not remember either

in fact, some would call the dream remiss

and just for this

though I insist

blessed be the dream that makes allowances

where the most astonishing things are not off topic

off message or ever conceived as such

for much have we also wandered

in the realms of gold

taking all the side roads even after Keats

and it is meet after long drudgery to suppose

even to long

for any interposition at any time as though

we were children waiting for the assignment to begin when

suddenly

we were in the kingdom of roses we made up

my sister and I in all our summer waking

when dreams spilled out into daylight

for the taking and the fairy tale adjudged

it right for snows to fall on the rosebuds overnight

but I’m talking about a public scene

the venue for some purpose with the

carpet in style from other decades

the complimentary buffet

implied the working dream day

in any meeting room, let it be assumed glorious

for saints or angels to float down or chime

and for this to seem normal to

bypass the facilitator

and not to cause a flurry the children had

the snows come early, early Christmas too

and there was not one rule that could govern the skies

or put us wise to news reports breaking over us like waves

like waves

that meant to drown us

ah, to no avail.

mary angela douglas 5 october 2019