Dusty Bones/Dreams

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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