November verse 14: On waking from a dream of a friend

Posted on 23 November 2020 | 6 Comments 
November verse 14:
On waking from a dream of a friend
who has been dead for many years

You left a note and neatly folded
clothes beside the famous cliff;
left the life and loves you'd shouldered;
vanished. But you left a whiff
of disbelief, and time's a traitor:
someone found you decades later,
now not Damien but Bob,
in Tassie with a uni job.
No note this time, a rope your chosen
tool: your mother mourned you twice.
This time there was no artifice.
Yet last night to my dream, unfrozen,
fugitive from death you came,
with warnings not to say your name.

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6 responses to “November verse 14: On waking from a dream of a friend”

  2. Jim KABLE | 23 November 2020 at 3.49 pm | Reply

    I have just been admiring a painting by the German artist Caspar David Friedrich – 1825 – The Cemetery Entrance. Then to come across your quite moving reminder of your friend and his double deletion from life – one a deception, one not – and all surfacing in your dreams. Uncanny. I do dream – I know it – I wake from them – but even as I wake the details slide slippery-like from my mind. I’d have been a dead loss at the Sigmund Freud family breakfast table! And you have heeded the dream’s warning not to mention the name beyond the Damien and the Bob. It reads not unlike the outline of a short story, to me. Home from Broken Hill and Cobar yesterday afternoon! From oven-like days into the low 40s to 22 degrees at Caves Beach – and to-day all overcast and sprinkly! (On and off.)

    Liked by 1 person

    • shawjonathan | 23 November 2020 at 10.27 pm | Reply

      Ha! I wonder if the Freuds discussed their own dreams over breakfast. Actually, I broke the rules by naming him at all. In the dream it was a third party who told me not to use his name, as if because of surveillance. You’re certainly copping the spring temperature extremes.

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    • shawjonathan | 23 November 2020 at 10.28 pm | Reply

      And actually, I think there’s probably a novel in this somewhere – though not to be written by me. He did write one of his own that offers some hints of what was boiling away inside him.

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  3. Jim KABLE | 23 November 2020 at 10.55 pm | Reply

    The possibilities of that lost life – as irvinm wrote: “tragic”! All lives lost to depressed states – turmoil – confusion – it is said that some 2,000 deaths have been attributed to Scott MorrIson and gang’s continuation of the algorithmic Robo-debt scam. Who will answer for that loss? Or must it wait for the mythic judgement in the after-life scenario. Not good enough for me – that. Or those young men out of Iraq/Afghanistan – taking their own lives because of the ugliness of what they were put through – by the same breed of politicians! (Sorry for running away with politics here – but honestly!!!!

    Liked by 1 person

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