Dreaming on a Cold Night Hundreds of Miles from Home Listening to the Furnace Hum

a prose poem

===============================================

I dreamed I was at the old Black Reunion in Danville, IL with just my Granddad and I and I was playing with little boy cousins I did not know.

I dreamed I was sitting on the front porch of my grandparents’ old house on Greenbush Street that was torn down while I was away at college to make way for a bigger school.

I dreamed my two older sisters and I were on the old glider swing. Our parents and younger siblings were inside in the living room listening to grandma gossip non-stop about neighbors and family.

I dreamed my sisters were trying to talk me out of climbing grandma’s tulip tree that was blooming in the yard next to an old wrought iron fence that ran along a sidewalk broken by tree roots of trees that grew between the sidewalk and the curb.

I dreamed when they weren’t looking that I snuck off through the gate between the garage and the clapboard shed at the alley fence in the back yard.

I dreamed I went to the little filling station a block away and talked with the old man who sat waiting for a customer to come by, but none came by so I wasn’t able to steal a candy bar.

I dreamed I wandered over to the old cemetery and looked at dates on gravestones and walked the section with little white stones for Confederate soldiers who died in our local hospital and the stones of WWI German prisoners of war who never went home.

I dreamed I was playing soccer among the gravestones and all the trash talk was nonsense syllables in rhyme and metered verse. We all started laughing ha, ha, ha’s that flowed in iambic pentameter.

I dreamed I returned to the family reunion. It was a sunny day. I was sneaking deviled eggs before prayer and the call to dinner and the women would laughingly shoo me away.

I dreamed it was just me and my granddad with all this family that I did not know and everyone kept coming up to say hello to my granddad and he was happy and smiling.

…and I dreamed I was happy watching my granddad and this big old family that was happy to be together on Sunday afternoon.

11-13-19