I Have A Dream... Poem by Denis Martindale

I have a dream
that one night a dream will make sense,
and not be a swift switch of scenery,
or seeing people I worked with decades ago,
or playing chess yet not seeing all of the pieces,
or looking forward to falling in love again,
or climbing a hill, looking down, running down,
and with a leap of faith flying along,
gliding along, just inches above the ground.

I have a dream
that one night I will sleep the whole night,
and not get woken by a bright light being turned on,
or birds twittering away at the first sign of dawn,
or some car being driven away as the music beats, beats and beats,
or I turn over in bed and fall off onto the floor,
or my pillows move and fall off the bed instead.

I have a dream,
an impossible dream, an implausible dream,
but just tell me why I can't profit from a dream?
Would it hurt to get rich dreaming lottery numbers?
Think of all the good I could do with all that loverly money.
But no, I dream about the strange,
the short, the sweet and the silly,
or the epitome of extended follies,
stretched out until I awake once more.
But then again, as has often been asked of us,
what is life without whimsy?


Denis Martindale. May 2021.