We Are Winter Poets
Day 3: Dreamscape
Dreamscape: a landscape or scene with the strangeness or mystery characteristic of dreams.
Hello friends,
Another day, another moment spent with words and intention and care. Thanks to each of you who has already shown up with such vulnerability and tenderness; you remind me that the winter season, and the holidays, are both beautiful and terrible, and our role is to hold space for ourselves and each other, and you all do that here.
I’m so grateful.
I really love this definition of dreamscape, especially those words strangeness and mystery because dreams are so often both of those things, aren’t they?
I’d like to tell you a little secret: in each of the four books that will make up the seasonal series of my children’s books, dreams play an important role. If you’ve already read Winter’s Gifts, you know that Dani has this magical moment with a dream:
Dani dreams she is gathered with friends around a giant tree, singing a song of gratitude and care, a song of companionship. Her dreamscape is vivid and kind and alive, full of kinship and belonging.
She wakes up with gratitude for the dream, and it keeps her going into all that waits for her, even (and especially) the challenges she faces.
So let’s pause here a moment with our own dreamscapes. Maybe you take a moment to think about the dreams you’ve been having lately, or you use this time to actually create the dreamscape you hope to encounter during the inwardness of winter.
It’s up to you. It’s your poem, your thoughts, your heart and words.
Dreamscape
We wonder sometimes if other worlds exist beyond this one,
other timelines that we can’t make sense of but are still there.
What happens to the ones on the other side of this?
Who are they and what kinds of lives are they living?
I think of the dreamworld in much the same way,
dreamscapes that arise as we settle deeper into sleep,
as we enter worlds we’re often unsure of.
The dreamscape offers us something we cannot name,
a presence, a possibility, a sense of belonging that won’t last
beyond this moment, this sleep, this tender doze.
But when we wake up, the dreamscape inspires us
into whatever is waiting, the dreamscape reminding us
that we are just as alive here as we are there.
Maybe dreams are not reality, but they remind us
that our reality matters, and we have the chance to make it
as beautiful and shimmering as we need it to be.
The dreamscape reminds us that we are actually alive,
capable of making dreams into realities,
capable of summoning a more loving world.
And how could we want it any other way?
Our dreams give us permission to show up today, right now,
and to believe that every moment that follows
and every future dream dreamt
will Continue to show us the way back home to ourselves.
A Dreamscape Haiku
the clouds above me
look like the ocean’s surface
am I in the deep?
The world is matte and blurred from smoke
or haze or the reluctance of dawn
after the longest night,
as if the land had tossed and turned,
then finally slept
and now can’t bear
the thought of light
so soon.
I walk into the sleep-blurred world
like into a dream.
I crunch my feet on frozen mud
to see if I’m awake
and puff great clouds of breath
to know that I’m alive.
A dog barks over and over,
Three short yips, then a vowel as long
as a rooster’s tail.
The dog crows and breaks the dawn
of the first day
after the longest night.
The dark lid begins to lift.
A blue eye peers through heavy clouds.
Today, I will pinch myself
and remember that I am awake.
Today, I will pinch myself
and remember to dream.