DREAM

kkk

There is a recurring dream I have
concerning my grandmother
and my mother respectively,
as they spend their last
weak, confused days
in a nursing home.



My small grandmother is
elegant, fragile and perplexed,
waiting in her delicately furnished room.
She is dressed in pale satin robes,
her thin white hair falling from it's pins,
rouge dusted too red
on her soft, powdered, wrinkled face.





My mother frets, lost in the halls,
dressed in beach clothes,
barefoot on hard rough carpet,
wishing instead for sand and fossils.
And a twin, separately lost in her own place.



I wander, searching for them,
the elevators taking me to odd corners,
halls loom in the gloom.
Asking only brings smokescreening.
Who will tell me how they are,
where they are?
Something seems wrong,
I've been here so many times before
I should know.



Sometimes staff are stealing valuables.
My grandmother's storage room
becomes a studio/warehous holding
art, old family sketchbooks, bibles,
books, jewelry, furniture
all arranged for auction.
I'm desperately trying to sort it all,
saving important historical heirlooms.
These items come down through generations.


Suddenly I'm standing
on the grounds of my childhood home,
Wild, untouched,
the only building,
a town founders' family mansion
is hidden from me
by hills and creeks.


And the dream tells a story,
maybe not real, but true.
About loss, change, grief.
I wake up sad and mystified.
A message?
A remembrance?
A history?




The day moves on,
coffee, breakfast, work.

I miss these women,
with all their foibles, troubles,
they are in my veins, my breath.

kkkkk