Theme & Variations

On dreams

Why do I dream what I dream? Of lost ways, floods, people, or purses; of brakes breaking and, on opening nights, lines unlearned; of bad guys at the window, predators chasing me. Are You the Producer? If so, what’s the moral of the nightmare?

My lover assures me my dreams are my poet’s brain having fun, but I’m not a believer — well, unless my Muse is darker than most of my art. Muse, is Your shadow crying out for release?

Or are You telling me, as do others, that I am every character in the cast? I can live with that, and learn. What I can’t live with is this:

If I have happy dreams, why don’t You help me remember them?

Jenine Bsharah Baines 2020

Theme and Variations is a musical term for compositions that begin with a melody, a theme, which is then altered subtly throughout the piece (variations). As I was pondering a Danse Macabre of a dream the other day, it came to me that dreams unfold as music does. There’s a theme…then, suddenly, a new variation, followed by another.

Dreams are also stories, disjointed but stories. O. Henry stories. And let’s not even try to count all the dreams that have inspired works of art — whether written, visual or aural.

For that reason, how could I not submit this to Storymaker? Thank you, Michael Stang, Anna Rozwadowska, and Larry G. Maguire for offering my dream(s) a home.

Thank you, readers as well — for enabling my dream of being read to be realized.