Hello There
Kate here again,
I hope everyone is well and managed to get some rest and relaxation over the summer.
The poem below is about a recurring dream I have and I am still having.
It scares the bejesus out of me each time.
Each time it's different people I see.
I don't feel like I am under threat in the dream. It's the situation and the look on their faces (when I can see them) that makes it scary.
Of the people I remember I have seen:
A slight built, balding older man with plastered down dark hair and a multi-coloured knitted vest.
A woman with a young girl about 8 years old . They were standing in gloom, so too dark for me to see exact features, but I know they both had long very curly dark hair.
The girl actually spoke and she whispered to the woman 'Is that 'her'?' - Only time anyone has spoken.
The one I had last week was a bit different.
It was an American First People's woman. She was very vivid to me.
She had waist-length straight silver-grey hair, parted in the middle, with a plain thin black band across her forehead.
She was wearing a well made traditional plain buckskin dress with a thin beaded belt, a small beaded short necklace and a long black necklace which held a large black obsidian pendant of an owl.
She looked straight at me, as if she knew I could see her. She bent forward and tried to hand me an old looking book.
It had a mottled beige covering with the corners protected with what looked like faded red leather triangles. It was a fairly thick book, looked quite old, but not ancient.
At a guess I would say about a hundred years old. (can't you tell I love books :0))
It had no 'title' or author, and nothing indicating it's name etc., on the plain red leather spine, the same as the 'triangles' which was odd.
Why would the book not be 'titled'?
I wanted to stay asleep to fine out more, but frustratingly - I didn't.
I still woke up with a scream, but I wasn't as scared this time as I felt she was not a threat, she was trying to communicate with me - I just didn't understand what she was trying to say.
If anyone has any ideas, then please tell me! I am really interested in finding out
Anyway, here is the poem:
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Dusty Bones
I have a recurring dream
That I wake up from every time
In sweaty, heart-pounding panic
I am lying in my bed
On the brink of sleep
And realise in my semiconscious state
That someone is standing over me in the dark
It’s a different person each time
Leaning to stare
Or maybe to study me?
I have not figured that out yet
I get the impression
That I am an exhibit
In a local museum
A pile of dusty bones
That now and again
Sees the observer
Staring agog
And for one moment -
We see each other -
And realise we are both being observed!
There is a moment of comprehension
I see their faces become wide eyed
With horror and dreadful surprise
See their ‘about to scream’ face
And that’s when I wake up
To find myself sitting bolt upright
And shivering in my bed
My ears catching the last remnant
Of a scream
And with shock I realise -
That it’s me that screamed
God knows what they see –
(For I feel they are real people)
A skeleton screaming back at them?
Or just a feeling of being observed
By a preserved corpse
At a local museum
Dusty bones, in a glass cabinet
Kept in a gloomy annex
Not ‘dust to dust,
Ashes to ashes’ for me
But an unnamed relic
Just a sticker on the glass box stating:
‘White, Female, Homo Sapien Sapien – 21st Century’
On exhibition, never to rest
Screaming silently again and again
© Kate McClelland 2015
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