Dream Poem for the Waking World

‘Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.’ - Carl Jung

I cried last night on the back porch in my dreams.

It was the same back porch I walked upon in the waking world when I was a real-life child, awake.

I could look outside and see family and neighbors alive and well, tending gardens, mowing, barbecuing, gutting fish.

Sometimes in the waking world I would walk outside and be part of everything everyone else was part of, too.

Trees and grass, blue skies and grasshoppers, happy chatter and cold drinks, older kids playing catch or jumping rope or laughing on the teeter-totter, me enraptured by games I did not understand but loved.

When I was a child, the air was fresher, the sunlight brighter, the smiles less fearful than smiles today.

When I was a young man, I thought I could walk away from the waking world and outgrow all that used to be me.

Little did I know that illusions exist in and out of time.

How could I have known anything more than any boy who dreams, who wakes up, who waits by the door, who truly believes in openings?

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