In dreams I return often
to my childhood garden,
that vast rectangle of lawn
and the bushes around the sides.
When you wake during a recurring dream,
you know at once it has been recurring —
this one all my life,
including the years I lived there.
The lawn has long been cemented over.
The raspberry bushes, the ferns and bamboo
and the two spreading willows
have all disappeared.
Nothing of it exists;
not the swing, not the summerhouse.
My brother and I
went back one day and saw.
But in my dreams I return
often to that childhood garden,
my archetypal garden, always green.
And I am at home there.
I love this poem. I sometimes 'visit' in my dreams my childhood home as well. When I go to my childhood city and drive by my old home, however, I see it is no longer the same. I prefer seeing it in my dreams.
ReplyDeleteThanks be for dreams and memory! :)
ReplyDeleteMy childhood memories are all of my grandma's garden, as she provided stability and safety in those years. My thoughts return so often, too, to that little cottage on Christleton Avenue, the pinks, the sweet peas, the hollyhocks, the weeping willow. I so resonated with this poem.
ReplyDeleteI do too. Your poem expresses perfectly that yearning feeling. How cruel to find that nothing is the same as it was.
ReplyDeleteThe dreams are a comfort, I find.
ReplyDelete