I Dream Dreams...... Poem by Anne Havell

I dream dreams of a garden
Perfect in all its detail:
Winding paths
Wisteria tunnels, a living gazebo
Vibrant flower beds, blue grasses, bamboos
Shady nooks,
Stepping-stones and a trickling stream.
An out-and-out feast of smell and colour
Riotously outrageous and so gloriously green.

My garden is a garden for all seasons.
A place to dream, to watch, to listen as
Honeybees drone lazily drunk amidst
Sweet perfumes; upright sunflowers
Salute the sun and delicate peonies
Sway gracefully in sweet gentle breezes.
I ignore birds guzzling ripe cherries.
Hanging in clusters from burgeoning trees.
Whose dazzling flowers once were daytime stars.

The dream changes!
I gaze transfixed as winds
Indifferent, cruelly and uncaring, batter
Alike sturdy branches and fragile stems.
Greedy magpies sighting a feast dive-bomb
At wriggling worms squirming amid sodden soils.

Wide-awake my dream now lies in shatters
Reality dissolves my garden of dreams,
There is no gazebo, no weeping cherry
No trickling stream. I weep for illusion.
I could if I’d wished created that garden,
Could have all that I saw in that sweet dream,
Sentinel sunflowers, delicate peonies,
Trailing honeysuckle. But therein lies the rub!

The problem is: I delight in caprice.
Once realised, I’d need another dream.