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PAST TIME NIGHTMARE

Based on events I experienced.

A child of four suffers recurring dreams,
disturbing parents and siblings with screams.
When she awoke, always sore in one knee;
next to a birthmark, it throbbed painfully.

Night after night she feared going to bed.
What caused these nightmares that raged in her head?
Even when grown, the torment persisted,
so a therapist’s aid she enlisted.

“Hypnosis,” said he, “might offer some clues.
Why not try it?  You’ve just bad dreams to lose.”
Once under, he guided her to a room --
here people’s lifetimes in books were entombed.

“Find one that is yours,” her counselor said.
Quickly she did, but before it was read,
she felt an ache, saw just a faint title.
The words, she thought, said “Alister Bridle.”

The hypnotic trance now suddenly broke;  
puzzling questions “Mr. Bridle” evoked.
For many years she thought that was her name;
perhaps a past life had been filled with pain.

Who was this man?  She simply had to know!
Seasons passed, summer suns made way for snow.
In Florida now, 1998,
she thought all the nightmares she had escaped.

But strange dreams always catch us by surprise --
when the lights grow dim, our minds fantasize.
Cloaked in velvet, she left her parents’ farm,
stealing away on a late autumn morn’.

To meet her love, she climbed on the carriage,
Warm-hued leaves carpeted the hillside road,
knowing her folks would forbid their marriage.
and her pulse beat fast; she’d soon join her beau.

She thought only of him; joy cast its smile,
but that’s when he called, “Alice, the bridle!”
The leather band broke and wrapped ‘round her knee.
To the ground she was pulled; her horse ran free.

She met death, but past-life dreams recycle,
and she’d never been “Alister Bridle.”

Copyright © Carolyn Devonshire | Year Posted 2009


My comment.
This is the first poem which Carolyn posted on Poetry Soup.  Immediately I was attracted by her capability of writing poetry.  Written in couplets, I knew I could never achieve such verses at that time.  I am more enthusiastic in writing free verse.  

Everybody suffers from nightmares but not in re-incarnation.  I personally had a few nightmares in my life.  Such dreams come because of anxiety.  I did my homework and tried to envisage how she wrote her poem.

Time passed and we began to correspond through Soup Mail.  We did not mind expressing our problems and ideas.  The worst was that I was not much of a writer.

As the days rolled she told me of her digestive problems, until one day she sent me an email telling me she was terminally ill.   It was the last time I heard from her.  Within a week she was gone for ever.  She was cremated and ashes strewn into the Florida seas.
I still grieve for her.  Now she is at peace.

!2 September 2021
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