They Flew Down From Heaven!

Sometime early this morning, my poet friend Nancy Dunlop texted me the dream she had last night. It is rich in imagery and it fits some of what is going on in my life right now! Yesterday a gigantic backhoe arrived to dig a pool in our yard. And as for wanting more life in my house, that's certainly true, as my middle daughter Lindsay is about to deliver her first baby. Excitement, yes, but nerves too! Oddly enough, I just last night started to read a novel in which a baby is born in the first chapter, and flocks and flocks of purple and white hoopoes (a Eurasian bird with a long, down-curved bill) descend on the city and the house where the baby was born. Nancy and I must have a little telepathy going on!

Here's her dream:

Claudia!

Had a very big dream

about you and birds

and a big city last night.

We were walking through small grottos

of overhanging trees

followed by wide swaths of skyscrapers.

Both landscapes living side by side.

Nature and concrete.

You were crying.

You wanted more pets,

more animals,

in your house.

More life.

But then we came upon

the little house in the thicket

in the thick of things.

In the thick of

many many small birds.

They rose from the ground,

shaking the fallen leaves.

They flew down from heaven.

They lit upon tangled branches,

making them shake

and shiver

in the little front yard.

We spotted the woman

who lived there,

washing her windows.

It was a wonderful house.

A house of many birds.

Your tears stopped,

making room for joy.

Nancy Dunlop, Ph.D., is the author of the widely praised new chapbook, Hospital Poems, which can be purchased on Amazon at this link.