A Dream Remembered

Once I dreamt of a simple unassuming house

built at the foot of a lake or the ocean,

I could not tell,

washed white

by the hands of wind and time.

The floors were hard and smooth,

cool and clean.

The walls were bare, all but one.

At the end of a hall,

hung a small and gilded frame

filled with a picture I remember well

but could not see.

I stepped out into the morning fog

rejoicing in its quiet grace;

which claimed the shore,

hugged the shore,

held the shore in grey and holy arms.

A small boat emerged

from the eternal grey,

gliding on the water’s tranquil face,

carrying two beings,

one familiar and an enemy.

One foreign and

I could sense, frail.

She was an Indigenous princess

sitting straight and noble.

The hue of her sun-kissed skin

had faded like the fog.

Long ago her raven black hair sang,

now it lay in long silver silence.

As the boat docked,

my husband

-or once I called him such,

lifted the princess into his arms

with a careful tenderness I had once

believed belonged to me.

He carried her to the door of my

white and wind washed house.

Speechless I let them enter,

directing him down the hall,

past the small and gilded picture,

to my bed – hard and hardly used.

Bit by delicate bit he laid her down

while I watched in dumb wonder

through a crack in the door.

But lo, I felt myself waking!

My dream-hands clutching wildly at

dream door frame, down dream hall,

out of that simple and tranquil

and perfect dream house.

My eyes opened, questions were all

that remained.

Over the years I have pondered this dream;

the house,

the princess,

the reverence that wrapped me,

like the fog,

in its capable arms.

The answers have come to me slowly,

floating in on the tide of experience.

The home – my new life, divorced;

swept clean and bare by the winds of change.

And the Indigenous princess – that ever

wild and noble part of me.

The one lost, or taken

or betrayed along the way.

The one returned home to me

to rest, to heal

to be nurtured and honored;

to once more, fill my house with

the music of her raven black hair

and the dance of her sun-kissed skin,

Holy and fully awake.

--Stacy Oler ©