There's a poet here, kozmokitty, who has the gift of imagery and metaphor. Yesterday, or maybe it was the day before, I read her latest post, "Deforestation", and it has inspired me to see if I could relate the essential elements of a dream I had several years ago in a form similar to, but not the same as, one of my recent poems, "mausoleum".
Here's what manifested:
markers
i've dreamt of oaks
you know?
i was half raven
the city long since dead
gray as the silent sky
streaked with granite
i held the air with
long black feathers
in cobblestone canyons
carved from history
i felt the old walls
brush my wingtips
high above narrow lanes
stretched empty below
then the buildings gave way
and i soared free
through an open square
orange with age
in the distant center
tall as the canyon
towers there grew
an old black oak
its crown was full
contrast to the lifeless
city frozen forever
to a moment in time
it grew from a circle
closed in limestone walls
where long sere blades of grass
rose perfectly still
its scaly roots
swam beneath the ground
like coiled serpents
half risen for air
and there i landed
near its broad round base
and rustled black feathers
neatly behind me
high in the crown
on a long thick branch
a large raven worked
at something unseen
its obsidian beak
puzzled probed and cocked
'til i found myself lifting
to see what it saw
and as i rose up
it studied my approach
then tossed its small find
from the edge
it settled deep
parting long thin blades
as i drifted back
to the ground
and about me there gathered
creatures of every kind
as i knelt as in prayer
near the trunk
all kinds of creatures
from all kinds of spirits
half-mooned around me
to see
one stood behind me
covered with stern brown eyes
which gazed down upon me
and in all directions
its skin was the bark
of all the old black oaks
returned to the dreams
of the earth
and i held in my hands
like a soft feathered stone
the black figurine
of a raven
whose breast split in two
its soft downy breast
where a glimmer of light
shone within
Over the years I've written two other poems inspired by this dream and my subsequently "meeting" the same tree in "real life". It grows by Orr Springs Road, several miles West of Ukiah, CA. The second of these poems I have posted here; it is titled "Oak Dream". The first I don't currently have posted here, but I'll do so in the not-too-distant future.