Afterdreams

The dream I had last night stays with me

like too much garlic in a restaurant meal,

but not in its entirety, mere fragments of

people I know to be familiar, but their faces

quite changed. However, it’s not those

familiars that haunt, rather the “feel” – the

emotion of something missed that nags at

my brain. It’s not a scary thing, just annoying

and I wonder how many hundreds of poems

stories and conversations this feeling has

seeded. I speculate if my dog has moments

of frustration at dregs of dreams she had

about a particularly annoying cat or smell she

just could not place in her catalogue of millions.

Maybe the cat much hated by my dog worries

for the rest of its day after dreaming about a

mouse which appeared to be a sparrow which

got away, though his teeth were firmly round

its throat; leaving that familiar feeling of, ‘where

did that go to,’ and the nagging taste of failure.