Learning My New Name

Some nights my dreams are strange and wild,

Often walking in the night, out in cold deserts,

Deep within woods, standing at unknown summit.

Why am I so often alone within these dreams?

 

I am never alone within a dream,

Always there is some Other with me,

Dark Presence, Companion, Angel

Watching, always watching.

 

Upon waking, it is images that remain,

Sometimes for a minute, then forever gone.

Other times the dream returns again,

Triggered by a word, singing bird, taste of Earth.

 

They come, they go, these dreams seem to long

To be more fully understood—

Carry a message in languages I do not speak.

But I pause and wait.  Speak to me….

 

Each and every one is luminous,

Brings a light from greater darkness,

So much unknown, unknowable inside of me.

I am as a boy holding a telephone.  I am deaf.

 

I am an altar boy standing in a graveyard,

But the dead have disappeared.

They come when I speak their names—

And the litany of names is so very long.

 

When I awake, I translate the pain in my joints.

I drag my chair back into clouds where I can see.

Searching for some vital Presence, this dream

A gift now saved by nothing less than grace.

 

How do I survive, come back, return from such dreams?

The answer seems to be, I do not…

Someone new, different has now awakened.

Each morning, I pause to learn my new name.