Deeper Listening

author's note:

“We experience a dream as real because it is real.”
                                 --  William Dement


DEEPER LISTENING

Though I seemed to break
its arc into eye dust
with the first blink
of morning--

in actuality, all day long today
I walked as I walked in the dream...
across a bridge immersed
in gray-white cloud--

the rock arch barely visible
but the cobblestones
clearly felt beneath my soles--

all day,
I strained to maintain this memory
because the heightened reality
is more of how
I wish my day would be--

yet in remembering
I become even more desperate
for release--
even more frustrated--

as I try to satisfy a desire
that demands ever-increasing amounts
of satisfaction...

but as I keep trying
I'm slowly recovering
as I listen more deeply
to rediscover

the walking drum of the dream--
the silent drum beat : an incantation--

as I listen--entranced
another--purer--spirit
fills me--a shadow spirit

barely known...
and yet a spirit
of my own.

© 2011, Michael R. Patton
dreaming steps