Someone Remembered Snow Cones in My Dream

to Ray Bradbury, for his story "To The Chicago Abyss"

someone remembered snow cones in my dream
a person I had never seen in real life
how funny I have often thought

the distinction between dreams and real life
except that in dreams you don't pay bills
or trudge up hills that make your muscles ache

but to get back to the snow cone
it was brought up in a casual way
and I knew out of everyone in the room

the dream room, I was the only one there
who knew why the man spoke of it and that it mattered
because he wanted to remember that

and not the original topic of conversation
which the dream did not remember either
in fact, some would call the dream remiss

and just for this

though I insist
blessed be the dream that makes allowances
where the most astonishing things are not off topic

off message or ever conceived as such
for much have we also wandered
in the realms of gold

taking all the side roads even after Keats
and it is meet after long drudgery to suppose

even to long

for any interposition at any time as though
we were children waiting for the assignment to begin when
suddenly

we were in the kingdom of roses we made up

my sister and I in all our summer waking
when dreams spilled out into daylight
for the taking and the fairy tale adjudged

it right for snows to fall on the rosebuds overnight

but I'm talking about a public scene
the venue for some purpose with the
carpet in style from other decades

the complimentary buffet
implied the working dream day
in any meeting room, let it be assumed glorious

for saints or angels to float down or chime
and for this to seem normal to

bypass the facilitator

and not to cause a flurry the children had
the snows come early, early Christmas too
and there was not one rule that could govern the skies

or put us wise to news reports breaking over us like waves
like waves

that meant to drown us
ah, to no avail.

mary angela douglas 5 october 2019