Over the past 3 months, several times in my dreams I have been actively writing a poem. I do not remember ever having dreamed about this before. Each time it was a lovely experience. I was enjoying thinking about my subject and finding the right words and images to explain something to myself. I had one of these dreams again last night.
This time I was remembering an experience from this past summer. We had gone whale watching with daughter Alicia and son-in-law Jason and grandson Riley who was 13. Riley has always loved animals and had a deep connection with them. So much so that he became a vegetarian a couple of year ago. In reality, we can across a pod of Orcas, exactly what we had hoped to see! We have been whale watching before, but this was the best show yet! The beautiful black-and-white creatures were leaping out of the water in smooth, sparkling dives. Four of them were swimming in a widening circle, two adults and two young ones.
The Captain told us that they were chasing a harbor seal and most likely the elders were teaching the youngsters how to hunt. It was then I realized that Orcas are also called Killer Whales and that they were going to kill and eat the seal right in front of us. I immediately began to worry that this would greatly upset Riley.
But they didn’t kill it. Our boat idled in the area and watched the whale antics for about a half hour. The whales continued to leap and dive, old and young, in tandem and separately. In the end, the seal swam away. Neither the Captain or the on-board biologist could explain why the Orcas let the seal go.
In my dream we all were again standing at the rail of the boat observing the beautiful, sleek creatures. I was writing a poem about them. Within the lines of the poem, the whales told me – yes communicated and let me know – that they had intentionally released the seal because Riley’s beautiful heart.
I woke up in a state of joy. Joy both at what happened but especially with the feeling that a deep truth had been revealed to me and that I was in the flow of deepest interspecies connection.
I have written lots of poems from dreams. I frequently remember my dreams. Few of them are entirely pleasant. Often I seem to be visiting or looking for houses and places where I once lived. Sometimes I see people I love who have crossed over. Mostly, though, I am just searching.
This beautiful dream was such a blessing, as poetry writing and reading has been for me all my life. I will try to reconstruct the dream-poem, what the whales said to me. But whether or not I create such a poem, I feel the dream was a validation of all the time I spend solving my life with words. I wish you a poetry dream too. It might be a good intention to send to the Muse before you fall asleep.