This poem was written by Marianne Velvart
I had a dream that Christmas was here again
Squeezed itself back
Through a sash window in the shortest month
Caught me with guard down
With the family round, hungry and expectant
And me in tacitly panicked, ad-lib mode
Acting unflustered, dutiful.
I evoke the dream in present tense
Not that Time exists beyond a linear mental construct
But waste none now because the family’s here
I cannot afford my penchant for analysis
Whilst there are mouths to be fed.
In the absence of Goose, a chicken will do for the table
And even as I spin and weave motherly magic
Time gains upon me in the race
Stuns me a sudden severance between feet and ground.
How did it happen? How did I get here, am I here at all?
I trace the origins of the reverie
To the recent past when
Time warped, turned back in on itself
Followed curved space, blurred then deceptively resolved
Returned me to the spot all too soon
And lucidly dreaming, I likened it to life
Asking ‘will it be just like this at the end?’
A series of blinks and the ride, over
The last scene arriving way too fast
Staged in a room without tinsel dressing
My hands curled around strings of floating recalls
Weaken their grip and glide
Away through the skylight
Of this life
This plane
This shortest interlude
In the vastest scape
Where in the end love’s all that matters
Caught only in dreams
Till there.
