ManicDDaily

Draft poem in honor of April, National Poetry Month.

Sparrow Dreams

I dreamt, years ago, that my infant child was a sparrow.
My husband, just last night, dreamt of a huge pooled grill
upon which customers threw raw steaks.
He also dreams of flying.

I rarely remember my dreams now–I don’t know if I can’t
hold onto them, or if I just don’t have them.  But I
dreamt, years ago, that I cupped the small brown bird,
who was my child,
inside my palms.

My husband dreams always, exciting scenarios.  Khaddafi makes
a house call; my husband disarms him while
lecturing on the merits of Debussy.

My mother once led, with great difficulty, a horse
down long dark stairs
only to find at the sweaty stoop
a sign that read, “Elevator For Horses
Only.”  Close to ninety, she still tells
that dream, but the words sometimes change:
“Horses Shouldn’t Take Stairs.”
My husband likes to tell his when he first wakes;
the surface of his sleep-furred eyes glisten
with the fantastical.

I sat holding my softly-feathered child on a bench
of women before sculptured green.  It was
Rockefeller Center, I remember, and that suddenly
I seemed to have put her down, my sparrow child, then
weeping, could not find her.

It was before her birth–when you are pregnant,
you have many dreams–but I knew, when I woke,
that my life was forever different,
that I had been given a fragile, marvelous, chance, a chance
I could not grip tightly (even though it might take flight),
but that I could not bear to lose, not ever.

As always, all rights reserved.

And also, as always, please feel free to let me know comments or suggestions.  This is a draft, and it would be wonderful to have guidance as to how to improve it.

This entry was posted on April 3, 2011 at 5:19 pm and is filed under poetry. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Brushes App, draft poem, drawing of sparrow on iPHone, iPhone art, Karin Gustafson, Karin Gustafson poetry, manicddaily, National Poetry Month, poem about sparrows and horse downstairs, poem written in pregnancy, remembering dreams poem, Sparrow poem