When Dreams Are Done With Them

Creatures aren’t happy when they have to leave a dream.

They’re rarely asked to come back even when they play

its vividly embodied  theme, or are the presence

that the dreamer has the dream to undergo –

which may have kept them purposefully in the center

of its flow. It’s far from guaranteed new dreams will bring

them that again – that they’ll mean enough to be recalled,

or will in any form again be seen. Their substancelessness

may be sprinkled into minor roles: crumbling mortar in a wall, 

cold spray off a waterfall, or a grayish fog that terrifies –

derives its ripe dank wet from some faint anguished

memory of gym class sweat. But memorable roles are rare.

Dreams here and there may care or dare to call them up

again if they were the afflicting sharp specifics of horrific

rape, or the abusive horrors in a childhood trauma.

Mostly, though, when dreams are done with them,

the odds against a future starring role are great.

Mostly they are shown the gate to their oblivion.

.