By: Connie Wasem Scott
Dream # 3: Peeping Tom
The delivery boy arrives
wearing a different
color than the one
we expect. Terri
forgets how the song goes.
So we go for a drive
with the stereo turned up
too loud. John
makes a wrong turn. We're
lost for months.
Next thing is, we drop to our
knees at our own
front door. The red paint
pales right before
our eyes. I can’t
reach the doorbell.
Inside, we hear the music
has died. Tomorrow
appears as a stranger
peeking through the drapes.
Dream #11: Spilled Milk
The fence post cracks in half from the top
to the base, so I step through it, make my way
past the compost bin where I believe
I hear the amber syrup ooze
into earth. The daylight ties
my smile to a cloud that’s smudged
with sunlight and shadow. The barn
blinks in the light where I peek
through a cracked door to see
big-eyed dairy cows spilling
their milk into pails. And there’s
my brother, crying as he tugs
the pink teats. The breeze
blows in, wipes his face. We hold
our hands and head home.
Connie Wasem Scott lives in Spokane, WA, with her Aussie-American husband and teaches a range of writing and literature courses at Spokane Falls Community College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Minerva Rising, Eclectica, Sycamore Review, RHINO, Slipstream and other journals, and in anthologies, including All We Can Hold by Sage Hill Press and Times of Sorrow, Times of Grace: Writing by Women of the Great Plains by Backwaters Press.
"The poems I’ve been working on lately examine various manifestations of loss and its sister -- sorrow. I got an idea to take some quirky fragments from my notebooks and work them into poems that complement those themes. These dream poems allow me to explore how the subconscious might examine loss or the foreboding sense that an unnamed loss is heading our way, or of brother loss, as in these two poems. This dream series has also been fun for me because I can’t remember my dreams anymore, or at least complete dreams. Only bits and pieces linger, and I like playing with them into poems."
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