Dream Time 1

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Mary Kendall

I’m working on a series of poems based on dreams. The draft is tentatively titled, Dream Time.

For years I didn’t dream. Oh, I know I did. Science can prove we dream. I just didn’t remember them at all. When my doctor put me on a new medication, a surprising side effect was very vivid dreams. Colorful dreams, strange dreams, confusing dreams, and beautiful dreams. I loved this unexpected gift, and so I have been working on cultivating how to recall dreams. We all know that dreams are quickly lost upon awakening. If they aren’t written down or recalled consciously, they float back to where they came from.

I’d like to share one of these dream poems today. This poem is loosely based on a very strange dream I had about chasing a bus. It was very disorienting to say the least. Of course, I checked dream meanings online, and I read that to dream of missing a bus is a very common dream. It tells of someone not sure of the path in which they are headed or if they missed an opportunity by hesitating, or even perhaps that they are faltering in a relationship. But none of these fits my dream of being lost in a city I know but looking totally different. A city in which no one can tell me its name or the direction in which they are heading. Please remember the poem is not a literal retelling of the dream as a journal would do. It is a poem and thus a product of the imagination.

The Missed Bus

Dream Time 1 ~ The Missed Bus

The missed bus
pulls away
from the curb,
picking up speed
faster than I can run.

In my sleep I am able
not only to run fast
but shout loudly enough
in a stranger’s voice
that might be heard
if only the driver
would catch
a glimpse of me
in the mirror
as I chase
the departing bus
on a street
I don’t know,
in a direction
of which
I am unaware.

Running so fast,
shouting
until my voice
gravels to a rasp,
my legs and arms
feather darkly
and suddenly lift up.

I am flying
above the bus

waiting for it
to stop or even slow,

but it speeds on
its course.

Sailing down
I see it is empty,
hurtling fast
somewhere,
nowhere,
unguided, and
with lowering wings
I fly into the open
side window,

my fingers emerging
from dusky feathers

I grasp the wheel
in desperation,
my foot able
to hit the break.

The stop is sudden,
my head rolls
forward fast
into the glass.

Only silence,
and absolute
stillness
now,

the wind
speaks of
something
I can’t
quite hear.

I awake
in my bed, heart
pounding,
head throbbing,
dizzy,
relieved.

Outside,
in the tall tree
the crow
watches
from his branch.
Even he is silent
for once.

Morning starts
to erase the night,
and the mist
begins to thin
in parts.

A new day
is waiting.

Longing for the Winter Sun

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Mary Kendall

Ever since I began this blog in late July, 2014, I’ve noticed how often I am inspired by beautiful photographs I come across. Word Press photography blogs are some of my favorites, but photographs appear elsewhere, too. Harald Illsinger’s beautiful nature photographs never fail to dazzle his fans and friends, and that includes me. This picture above is one he labeled, ‘Longing for Winter Sun Light.’

Mid-winter can be dreary, dark, depressing for so many of us. This picture is the antidote to all of that. The colors are so brilliant that our eyes can’t stop looking at this picture without murmuring something about how magical it is or how much like a painting it is. This is one photograph I would love to have sitting before me at my writing desk. Thank you, Harald, for allowing me to use this brilliant picture. Your elegant Viennese light is very special indeed.

Longing for the Winter Sun

river running roughly
winter chill set in

deep, deep
into the bones

waiting for warmth,
cold winter light

sun frozen in place,
color splashed

across the water;
the swans are quiet,

now nestled deep
in the grasses,

this simple knowing
when land offers

respite, relief
from wild waves

and frigid ripples,
river running deep

Remembering Winter Wash Days

Posted on January 30, 2015 by Mary Kendall

Laundry Day
by Andrew Wyeth

How many of you readers remember the scent of clothes and sheets dried outside in summer? That fragrance is something you never forget. All the fabric softeners in the world can’t duplicate it. In our busy world clothes dryers are something we all use. I can’t imagine hanging clothes out to dry at my stage of life. However, while we are living in London, our flat has a nice washer/dryer combination unit. British machines are very difference from American ones. This one is smaller and takes much, much longer to run a cycle. The dryer often leaves clothes slightly damp. Luckily the flat is well equipped and we have two small folding laundry hangers where I can hang things out to finish drying. I don’t mind doing this at all. It reminds me of my childhood when we always hung laundry outside out of necessity. Even in cold, cold weather.

The following poem was written a few years back for a prompt on PoetsOnline (see http://www.poetsonline.org) about laundry. While several poets chose the metaphorical allusions of hanging one’s laundry out or dirty laundry, the prompt evoked in me a sharp image of having to scramble to pull half-frozen clothing off the line before the snow came.

ON WINTER WASH DAYS

On winter wash days, those on the cusp
of warmth, we hung out the clothes
with numb fingers, feeling the curtain
of clouds closing in.

Those were the days when the sun
often hid, and the cold never left at all.

Fabric froze hard, and dresses
and shirts grew solid and stiff.
Rows of sheets, towels and clothes
waved wildly, like pages of a book
flapping in the wind.

In late afternoon, we took it all down,
clothespins snapping shut as each piece
was pulled, placed in the wicker
basket and taken inside.

The darkness closed in early
those mid-winter days, the
evening star sometimes rising
before the icy moon.

Burnt Toast

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Mary Kendall

Marcel Proust had his fragrant shell-shaped madeleine and linden flower tea. I have my burnt toast.

How often have you found that a simple smell can carry you back in time or far away? It happens to all of us, the sense of smell being strongly linked to evoking memories. Scientists can now prove this through brain scans, but artists and psychiatrists have long noted how taste and smell work with long-past memories far more than other senses. Proust says it so eloquently:

“When from a long distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”

For Proust, it wasn’t simply the beautiful shape of the madeleine, but the smell and taste of the madeline dipped in the linden flower tea that brought back a flood of memories.

The other morning as I waited for two eggs to boil, I made some toast. It was lovely whole grain bread bought in a farmer’s market here in London. I cut the slice a bit unevenly, and I think it was this that caused the bread to stay down too long in the toaster. I smelled it before I noticed the smoke. The bread was burnt. Feeling annoyed that I hadn’t caught this in time, I grabbed a knife and began to scrape the charred layer from the toast. You can guess where I am going with this, can’t you? In a split second or two a long forgotten memory came flooding back from my early childhood. The poem, “Burnt Toast” was written later in the week. Interestingly, as I wrote each draft, I imagined the smell of the burnt toast over and over.

burning toast

Burnt Toast

I burnt the toast.
The butter knife
rasped across
the too dark toast.
Sooty crumbs
flurried down
into the sink,
and the smell
of blackened bread
brought back memories
of momma doing this,
scraping the bad away.

Hazel eyes twinkling,
she’d tell us the burnt part
would whiten our smiles,
and we’d always laugh
at this silly joke,
never quite sure
if it might not be true.

But one lost slice
was one less meal,
and she was unwavering.
We would never
know the hunger
that hovered close by.

Even to this day,
I have a strange fondness
for slightly charred bits of food,
my mother always standing there,
at the edges of my memory.

burnt_toast430x300

Ginger Tea

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Mary Kendall

curls of steam
a pot of ginger tea
fragrant this night

silent crow …
holding tight in
winter wind

Crow on a Willow Branch, Japanese woodprint, Library of Congress

Winter Moon Haiku

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Mary Kendall

Winter Moon Haiku

These haiku were first published PoetsOnline in response to a prompt for winter haiku. In the summer of 2011, I was contacted by the American composer, Paul Carey, who asked permission to use the haiku for a commissioned composition. These were used as lyrics for “Winter Moon” by Paul Carey, a piece for women’s chorus in 2011. The work was premiered on December 8, 2011 by the Clark College Women’s Choir (directed by April Duvic).

Sadly, I’ve never gotten to hear the musical piece since I’m on the east coast and Clark College is in Vancouver, Washington. It would be my dream to get a download of that performance, but enough time has passed that I believe that won’t happen. Still, it was a true honor to be asked to use my haiku in a composition.

I’ve decided to post these haiku today because yesterday was the first full moon of the new year, 2015. Often called the Wolf Moon or Old Moon, the full moon is always a magnicent display for us to observe. I have always felt I could write more freely and easily during a full moon, though I have no proof of that. It’s just a gut feeling of a single poet. Because these were published as part of a composition, the haiku won’t appear in any journals, so I’d like to share them with the readers of this blog. Otherwise they lie dormant in my poetry folder along with so many of their friends.

I offer good wishes to each of you for the new year.

night snow

boughs dreaming

of first blossoms

Fog filled woods~

even the winter moon

has lost its way

a winter walk

footprints

tell no tales

the blue moon

silently closes the door

upon the year

A Poet in Time

One Poet's Writing Practice: Poems by Mary Kendall

Tag Archives: Mary Kendall

Dream Time 1

Longing for the Winter Sun

Remembering Winter Wash Days

Burnt Toast

Ginger Tea

Winter Moon Haiku

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