Dying to Live

author's note:

To those who say dreams have no meaning, I say…

Maybe your dreams don’t.  Mine do.


DYING TO LIVE

Years ago, in a dream
I stood on a hilltop
and gazed down
at a spread of green farmland
stretching for miles

but the way the ground kept shifting
beneath my feet


distracted me from paradise:

what a shock
when I then found
my hill was just a pile
of bleached skeletons:

a wild massive jumble
of femurs and fibulas
and curved rib bones--
of vertebrae and pelvises
mixed with skulls grinning
as if happy about death.

As I teetered and tottered
atop this rickety wreckage
I had to hold my arms
open and out
for balance--
oh, how the stretch
made my chest ache!--
ache until my ribcage
felt ready to burst.

I awoke with a fright
but upon reflection realized
this positive message:

if I didn’t stretch open
I would fall down and die

and though I would also die
if I did stretch
that death would lift me higher
by adding yet another skeleton
to my glorious hill.

Since that dream
I no longer complain
about the pain
of stretching

or at least, not as much.

The Truth of the Dream: poetry ebook
© 2021, Michael R. Patton