Thursday, October 9, 2008

Friday Fiction for October 10th, 2008

I missed Friday Fiction last week, due to being on a road trip to Himalaya Bay, Mexico for our scuba certification dives. I’m glad to be back this week.

Earlier this week, I made a comment on the Faithwriters Forums regarding poetry. It has been many years since I wrote much in the way of poetry. I have to be in the right mood to compose it, but I’ve always preferred a recognizable rhyme and meter pattern to my poetry. Maybe I’m just not creative enough for the “freeform” poetry that is popular today, or maybe I’m just old-fashioned and too locked-in to the traditional form.

Regardless, this is a poem I wrote for my wife very early in our relationship. It has resided for nearly thirty years in a “Nothing Notebook” I bought during our courtship to preserve our lovenotes and other such memories. This poem was folded along with a copy of the short narrative that follows it.


Dreamkeeper
By Rick Higginson
For Nancy, circa 1980


She’s just laid her head down low,
Closed her eyes to sleep;
And you’ve come, her fantasies to know,
Her weary dreams to keep.

Guide her steps down clouded ways,
Lead her peacefully.
Lift the veil from her shrouded gaze,
Please lead her then to me.

Morning brings the rising sun;
Calls reality.
Then you close your box and rising, run,
And take her fantasy.

You are called the Dreamkeeper,
You know what we see.
You know the mind of my own sleeper.
Dreamkeeper, lead her to me!


Seems he comes to my room night after night, this shadowy figure. He only enters after I close my eyes to sleep, and he brings a strange little cloudy box guarded religiously at his side. Standing over me as I sleep, he smiles smugly; so confident in his calling. Some have called him Sandman, and say he carries the sand of sleep in his cloudy box, but I know him for who he really is.

He opens his box and ponders the contents thereof. Though I have never peered into his box, I feel what is in it; for in his cloudy box is all that I desire, all that I love, and all that I fear. He selects an item and studies it carefully, examining the possibilities it poses, and then modulates my mind with the story he has chosen.

He can make me fly. He can excite me. He can disturb my peace with visions of phobias long recessed. He plays every fantasy in his cloudy box, teasing me with visions of greatness and glory, or of futility and shame. Yet, every morning I long to continue the game - he beckons me to. He tempts me to forever stay in my dreams.

He is Dreamkeeper.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You should write more poetry. :)(the Christmas Tree one is great too). I like all your descriptions and the mystery of this dreamkeeper.

Yvonne Blake said...

There's nothing wrong with being old-fashioned. I prefer poetry with rhythm and rhyme too.

This reminds me of Lois Lowry's new book, Gossamer. It's about a good dreams defending against bad dreams of a little boy.

You got wonderful imagery here. Keep it up. You're doing great!

Joanne Sher said...

This is lovely, Rick. Your wife is blessed to have a poet for a husband (whether you write it often or not!). Lovely and beautiful.

LauraLee Shaw said...

This is incredible. Wow. Loved it, Rick.

Patty Wysong said...

Thirty years, huh? So glad you held on to it!! Very nice indeed!