Dream of a Woman whose Husband has Died
Another dream. I am sitting on a bench in a large gas station, gas pumps are right beside me.
I am waiting for something. I feel uncertain, and frustrated.
I go into the adjacent building structure which turns out to be my brother Steven's home. he invites me to spend the night and offers me the choice of an upstairs bedroom or a downstairs (as in finished basement) bedroom.
Justine, my cousin, is somehow there (but at a distance) and is offered the same choice of bedrooms.
There are some extraneous furniture and odd pieces of metal or building materials like the kind of unnecessary stuff that my brother would keep. I seem to speak to Justine but in a very limited way.
I look at the stairs leading to the upstairs option and then I choose the downstairs bedroom, she indicates her preference for the upstairs option.
I descend some stairs and encounter some of these extraneous materials, but I am able to move around these things -- then it all fades.
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In your brother’s house there is a space – are
You seeking it? You are finding it.
Really there are many spaces, one is
Empty, high and frothy, for birdsong and wit
And leafy sunlight, your cousin will take that
One. Also there is a deeper space, full
Of darkness, cool as the shadows of shadows.
Do you seek it? You find it. Whatever
Is it for? Deep as deep, below
The living. I think it is not a grave
To die in – death seeks us, and you are finding
This – a woodchuck could sleep all winter there,
Its dreams composed of all the family sounds
That drop through distance thoughtlessly. Nor
Is it a tired, sick space for there was fuel
Aplenty before your trek began, and you
Renounced it, so full of fire you were
Already. You will not be distracted by
The folderol your brother likes. In
The damp darkness of a family where
Its roots entwine you study the darkest growth.