Helen Keller's Dream Poem by Patti Masterman

Helen Keller had a recurring dream,
That she described as the sensation
That something heavy had fallen in the dark,
Shaking the ground beside her.
Her early world was composed of only
Darkness and vibration;
No light, no sound, no faces;
No words to explain the unknown,
Just the feeling something had changed,
Irrevocably and mysteriously.

Crawling, groping in her blindness,
With no way for anyone to communicate with her,
The greater meaning of the world at large went missing.
She became like a young, crazed animal
Because there was no subtlety to her understanding.

When everything around seemed to be falling,
Going down into the eternal blackness,
All that was left to do was to run,
And even then there was no real sanctuary to be found;
No way to confirm that your worst fears weren’t busy
coming true.