I ... entered the poem of life, whose purpose is ... simply to witness the beauties of the world, to discover the many forms that love can take. (Barabara Blackman in 'Glass After Glass')

These poems are works in progress and may be updated without notice. Nevertheless copyright applies to all writings here and all photos (which are either my own or used with permission). Thank you for your comments. I read and appreciate them all, and reply here to specific points that seem to need it — or as I have the leisure. Otherwise I reciprocate by reading and commenting on your blog posts as much as possible.

24 July 2011

In Dreams I Return Often


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.

5 comments:

  1. 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.

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  2. My 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.

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  3. I do too. Your poem expresses perfectly that yearning feeling. How cruel to find that nothing is the same as it was.

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