Alpha Dreams

"Write your dreams," Carolyn Kizer told us in a long-ago poetry workshop in Paris. I would like to, Yes, follow that instruction, but on wee- hour trips (no pun intended), to the 'salle de bain' I describe as 'the patter of little feet,' I sit dazed, drowned in the rip tide of the sandman. Swim sideways, it is said, and do not panic. My betta, Beau, (for beautiful) in his glass bowl has no such problem. He dozes on an artificial leaf fastened by suction cup at the edge of the water where he hangs, calm and motionless. I'm pulled from my dream where I am the hostess in a strange house, pouring champagne into crystal flutes. Among the guests, several lovers from the past, accompanied by their current amours. Only one embraced me with the old sexual longing, (but didn't leave his telephone number). In the dream I walked to the back of the house into a spacious yard which became the ocean, waves breaking at the brink of an open door. "If this were MY dream," said Terri, our leader in a dreamwork class, "I would... " maybe, say, that the ordinary can bespeak peril? I press my hands against my eyes to shut out the light, and then I rise, reluctantly, from roaming the corridors of night to go feed the fish who bolts from sleep, swims to me when I press my face against his bowl, and say, Good Morning, Gorgeous. You, of the dreams of open streams-- the dream that spins fins.