Polar Bears

Wow!
Has it been that long
since I've last posted something?

Last night,
I had dream
that we were coming home
from I don't know where.
We were driving down
Jefferson Avenue.

But Jefferson was flooded.
I didn't want M. to drive through
thinking that the car would sink.
But he drove through anyway.

There was a huge polar bear
just off to the right.
It was so huge
that I thought it had to be
a mechanical bear,
that the water
was part of some sort of festival or something.
The polar bear
was large enough
to swallow the car whole.

And then,
I saw another polar bear
come up from underneath the water.
Only his head popped out of the water.
This one was also to the right of the car
but much closer.

Finally,
we reached a place
where the water over the road
was much more shallow.
He parked the car
and we proceeded on foot.
There were three of us
in the car.


Many of the people
were flooded out of their apartments.
They were sitting in lawnchairs
just in front of their homes.
The apartments were very, very small,
just one room homes.

The electricity was off
because there was just so much water.

Finally,
we came upon a place
where we could rest
after walking such a great distance.
The electricity was still off
in this place
but there were pillows and blankets
and chairs
for us to rest a bit.
The only lights that worked
were battery operated.

It turned out
that this was actually someone's apartment,
but he let us rest there for awhile.

No one ever knew why there was so much water
or where the polar bears came from.

A Hidden Room at my Old Elementary School

I had a dream
that I was in my old elementary school.

I went into one of the rooms
and it was totally trashed.
People had just destroyed everything.
The walls were destroyed,
the floors. . .everything in the room
suffered at the hand of vandals.

I went into another room
and it was in a bad state, too.
But this room suffered more
from just being abandoned.
No one had destroyed it.
The thing is,
no one took care of it either.
And time was destroying it slowly.

And then I found another room.
It was almost like an outdoor courtyard.
In the school, but outside.

The room was very well kept.
It had many dressers and lamps.
But they were all antiques.
No chairs at all in this room.

And then I noticed
that in order to sit down
people would open a drawer
from one of the dressers
and just sit in that.
Which drawer you would open
depended on how tall or short you were.

I opened a drawer to sit down in
and noticed
it was filled with old clothes and towels.
They were well folded, well cared for.
But I could tell that the clothes were old.

I noticed that I had a long, old fashioned skirt on.
Like the ones the ladies where
in that TV show, Little House on the Prairie.

There were two elderly people there,
a man and a woman.
I didn’t know the man’s name.
But the woman’s name was Maddie.
She said that she hadn’t had many visitors lately.
We chatted for awhile.

And then,
a child came in.
He was glad to see me.
He asked how long I had been there,
if I had plans on coming back for frequent visits.
The child’s name was Maddie also.

The sky started to turn dark
and clouds started to appear.
They all decided to go inside.
But I wanted to stay for awhile.

And I began to wonder what would happen
to all of that antique furniture
if the rain came.
The others didn’t seem concerned about this at all.
I just sat there for a while,
admiring the sky
and admiring all of the old antique furniture.

I wondered why I never saw this room
when I was a young student in this elementary school.
I wondered who else didn’t know about this hidden room.