A Lesson on Poetry from a Dream....

I awoke early this morning to the sound of many voices, familiar voices. Voices I knew were just inside my head. They couldn’t be real. I knew this because the voices I recognized were of people all of them dead. One voice stood out from the crowd, a calm voice, steady and rhythmic and measured. A woman’s voice. It was clear and melodic, like the sound of cold mountain water over the rocks in the river. There was an urgency, and intensity to the lilting timbre. The power of it could have withstood a maelstrom.

Above the other voices, many of whom I knew well, the voice rang out. Like listening to the sounds of a party through a crack in the door, other voices could be heard in muffled tones, but the woman’s voice came through loud and clear like the toning of a bell.

I listened to that voice and remembered the person it had belonged to. The voice I heard speaking had belonged to Maya Angelou. She lectured, in this dream,  about poetry.

The voice told how to make a poem from anything. How to make a poem even from the dream I was having.   The words of this poem were spoken to me as I slept and I jumped out of bed when the lecture was done, to write it down before I forgot.

In the semi-dark of dawn, the faces of the departed rise up,
The gloom clinging to their features.
Like mist rising from the water of a glass surfaced lake.
They rise, and remind me of all that went before
    …and the loves we once shared.
Still connecting heart to heart through the gap between the worlds.
My mind, the conscious part, is stirred,
    Open to the mystery.
Inquisitor of the darkness.
My heart opens and I see the love of the Universe,
Towards us all, each and all.
My heart takes flight,
Sent soaring from the realization,
Of the wisdom of the night.

The voice in my dream went on to talk about many other things, how to use ordinary and familiar words then pepper in unusual ones to grab a reader’s attention.  It’s a shame…. the lesson was lost on me, I’m not a poet, and never wanted to be one.  Perhaps this may make more sense to those of you who are or aspire to be poets. I do not think it was really her, let me make that clear, probably some spirit imposter who was seeking attention by using the familiar sound of her voice.

Or, it could have just been a dream, a figment of my own imagination. It’s doesn’t matter in the long run.

I like the poem …whoever wrote it!