The Turquoise Pen

Dreams

Noël R. King

One night at the river’s edge, I paused and looked at the sky. It was blank, just like my mind. I was lost in a dream, and I couldn’t find my way back out. My dreams often ended this way, my soul a scarce, dim shadow barely lived inside of them.

I tired of this; last night I changed it all.

Last night I filled my dreams with graciousness and space, the brilliant scent of clarity a richness in the air, the Truth of life green-weaving through the seashine sands and palms.

I dashed my skies in pinks and storm-thick grays and every regretful hue that I could find. I made mousselike mud and frenetic tadpoles, and I ate French toast that made me weep with joy.

I invited all who appeared in my dreams to live the rainbow arcs of sunshine in their eyes and to sing the songs of words they longed to hear. I sang them, too, because I knew exactly what they were.
I met some curiously familiar strangers (I had brought them here for just this purpose) and they shone at me, their eyes lit up, their hair on fire. They were thrilled to see me here and wished me well. We sparkled as we passed on crunching stones along the way.

I walked along a stream that led to water falling far below—cliffs and then the distant echoing of every lovely life, once lived, now passed. I smelled the honeysuckle. So did bees, all buzzy with their smiley businesses: “We have our work, you know!”

I breathed the air; it reached my heart and then my head. I felt the light rise up in all my cells. They laughed with sheer good will. “Let’s go live some more!” they cried, and danced in sing-song circles there beside the tree that I had made.

A tree with all the wisdom of the age, and all the power, therefore, too. A tree that I had made before in dreams but had never got this close to yet. I felt it reaching out to me, and then, with all the air between us, was embraced by it forevermore.

When I awoke to face my day today, I found that dreams flow forth regardless of one’s state of waking or of sleep.

—As circumstances warrant, through her Turquoise Pen column Noël R. King, Scottsville, Virginia, reports on strange things, including dreams that flow continuously forth.