Not again. Here I am flying lilting laps in my childhood bedroom—
flying nightly, quietly, right under the ceiling, close enough
so that I can swat down corner cobwebs,
along with memories—this cornerstone of dreams.
When I look down now, I see my eight-year-old self
already deep in days of the past.

In another dream, I throw open my window sash
to a sobbing, soaked cat. Once on my bed,
this critter changes into frightening shapes,
—so much for good deeds.
These two dreams are the least of my worries.

For decades I am in that childhood home in my mind,
conversing with family, neighbors, relatives.
Everything, everywhere, a problem—the wire
holding up dreams.

I read over my years of dream accounts
scribbled in spiral notebooks in the dead of night—
this maze of names, problems, piccadillies, disasters,
all of us from the dead to the living appear with much
need to rehash the past—all the discussions about
clothes, houses, money, divorces, death.
These memories are like dead fish stacked in your bedroom—
it's something you really should deal with.

And the minutia we recount—eternally.
I wonder why my sister (in that one dream) commented again
on my choice of necklace to wear at her wedding…

Get over it! It's only been 50 years.
I'll chew on this for a while, on everything—
my dead Finnish relatives coming back for coffee and UP Trenary toast,
with nothing but time on their hands,
with laments, regrets, and wry (not rye bread) offerings.

Linda Aschbrenner reads, writes, and dreams from a Marshfield marsh. She published 100 issues of the poetry journal Free Verse in addition to 17 chapbooks for fellow poets. Her writing has appeared in Moss Piglet, Bramble, Verse Wisconsin, Peninsula Pulse, Poetry Hall, Yankee, Cats Magazine, and California Quarterly.