In the Blood

I dreamed all the seas were gone, blown dry by a malicious wind. The ground stretched and cracked and its breaking let out foul smells. Clouds thinned and died forever. Lush became a word forgotten. Green did not exist. No tears welled in people's eyes. I was a fly, clinging to carrion--your love for me long dead.

I think we do not dream in words. But to tell it is another thing. Then words, our tools, become phantom, and where one time they might distort and change what we would say, they may this time not distort enough. We may despair of ever getting it right, whether it's a dream to tell or a memory or a high-minded thought, and we wonder if the result is ever worth the struggle. But the wish to try gets in the blood, like music, like the love of that one person you have to have, and we write--to release the hold these things have on our minds, to sort the moments or our lives, perhaps never to say something final and definitive. It's all quite tentative, remember.