Poetry Assignment: Remember a dream and describe a series of images from the dream
The following dream came to me at least thirty-some years ago, but it is still vivid in my memory:
There is a greenish light emanating from my parents' bedroom. I am in the hallway at the top of the steps leading up to their second floor.
I peer into the bedroom, and see my dear father seated in the easy chair in their bedroom – the chair he used to sit in to say his night prayers. (“The Lord knows I work hard and am tired at the end of the day,” he once explained to me when as a child I had asked him why he didn't kneel to say his prayers. “The Lord is just glad to hear from me,” he had said. “He doesn't mind that I rest my weary bones while I talk to Him.”)
My father had been dead for several months at the time I had this dream, and in the dream, upon seeing him in his chair, I feel a lifting of the great weight that had been in my chest. “Daddy, you're back!” I say, and run into the room toward him.
I see that his coloring is very gray. He smiles at me, but it is a sad smile. The weight in my chest comes back.
“Yes, I'm back,” he says, “but it's a mistake. I am very, very tired! I don't belong here anymore.”
Without any further word between us, I know he has to go back.