Monday, December 5, 2016

Susan Hawthorne #343 odd dreams (with a nod to Sara Dowse)


sometimes you wake
with a revised family history
my dream tells me that
my grandmother long dead
hit by a tram in St Kilda
had not died but instead
moved to London where
she married a CND activist

I mull over the logistics
of this    in 1958 there were
no electronic passports no
fingerprinting at the border
a good fake passport
could get you through

and my mother's grief?
in the dream she knew
but back then the truth
was that she would never
see her again too far away
to travel too costly to make
those expensive trunk calls

and the politics? it's this
that makes me doubt
the dream most while
progressive in matters
concerning women
it's unlikely she would
leave her daughter for
such an uncertain future

the dream's genesis?
all these stories of
grandmothers searching
for grandchildren born
in captivity kidnapped
by military families
I too am searching for
the lost grandmother
the one who would
have understood

my mother is dead
so I can't ask her I have
to believe the waking
story which itself is
almost as incredible
as fiction or odd dreams

4 comments:

  1. Ah, Susan, so marvelous and moving. Like these constellations we look up at.

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  2. we are always surrounded by holes in the walls of what we take for reality

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  3. Thank you. Life is just weird sometimes!

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