Poem 4



I’ve always been fascinated how in dreams (my dreams at least) the identity of people is malleable, a character can shape shift, someone faceless suddenly come into focus – also that I can recognise someone from a quality of their presence as much as or instead of their features … this poem captured that feeling for me, and the idea that perhaps the significance of a dream is less about what happens and more about who’s in it … 

( title borrowed from a Bruce Springsteen song … I like the word vagaries … )



Meeting Across The River

Dream may be a chaotic country
a festival of shuffled spools
but like Fellini
the atrocious plot carries
the same cast
the small circle of faces
never completely dropped

I can stand the vagaries of a dream
for your company

that is
           someone sits down in a chair
and only because
I want it to be
it's you



Meeting Across The River