a poem by Chris Skoczynski
Chris is a spring 2022 graduate of the Dream Work program. She
says, “This poem and many others were included in my final project for the Haden Dream Work Training – an altered book containing all the poems that came to me during the program. The name of my book is: Altar Ego, because of a line of poetry that came during my fourth Intensive: ‘maybe this is why we need altars.’ Before entering the program I had not written a poem in probably 40 years, and as a result … now have at least that many, perhaps one for each year I had let that spirit lie dormant.
when we were birds
when we were birds
we sang each other to sleep
calling through and under the leaves.
we whispered our prayers
and our collective breath
felt like breeze,
looked like fog,
smelled like smoke.
when we were trees
we burrowed down and away
through descendants of the taproot,
held hands in the fibrous network,
and sent each other messages of
hope
and encouragement.
when we were light
we twinkled, shone and beaconed.
We spread with wild and joyful colors
thrown by the skirt
of Nataraja
as she spins and twirls
in the dance.
when we were music
we were instrumental.
we soared and twisted and spiraled
around one another.
one person alone cannot hum a symphony.
we needed the silvery flute
to lift the thrum of the bassoon,
the weeping of the cello.
when we were dreams
we crept under locked doors,
slithered in ditches,
rode the train.
we cajoled and beseeched
and reminded
and prodded.
when we were dreams
we knew how to ask for what we needed.
when we were together
we opened many doors,
poised on thresholds,
we stood, giddy, on the fulcrum.
we face the Janus without tension,
this composition of opposition,
we exit to enter.