Thank You For Both Dreams Poem by Diana van den Berg

I think
maybe
I have
dreamt of you
since your death
more than I know
but in your
wisdom
and grace
you are
breaking me in
gently
to remember the dreams
when I awake.

Months before the first time,
I awoke, aware
that I had “nearly” dreamt of you.

Then the first time,
(on the morning after my
late mother’s birthday)
I couldn’t talk about it
for weeks
and yet
I only had a glimpse
of your head
over the second-last stable door.

This time
(on the morning after Tigger’s birthday)
I was close up to you
for a moment
and you were there
and almost not there
good
and kind
and noble
and beautiful,
and for two days since,
my heart trembles
and I am
strangely disturbed
at the enormity
and the newness
of the encounter
and yet
relieved and grateful
and tentatively
reaching
for the peace
and love
that you are
sending me
through these dreams
that I have
awaited with trepidation and longing
for nearly three years.

Yet the strangeness persists
and I am
consumed
with hard to place, confusing emotions
that I think are partly fear, partly longing, partly peace,
- the fear I think, because
I had expected
to awake
unbearably distraught
at the shock of realising again
that you are
no longer
alive.
And yet, both times,
I awoke, knowing that it was only a dream,
and I know
that I have
you
to thank
for that,
my precious, beloved, most loving,
angel horse.
I know, now,
that you will know
when I am ready for a third dream
and I await that with
longing and a little less fear.

(18 March 2005)