By Susan L. Daniels and Noel A. Ihebuzor

i have flown too
pushing off with one foot
and coasting thermals with hawks

but after i am above trees, dispersing clouds
skipping over jet trails–
never in dreams have i found a way
back to down but opening my eyes

and waking
up, finding it gone
and wishing that magic to
resume spinning silk threads;
tangling delight so lightly

sometimes, you wake up
at the wrong time in a dream,
floating in its amber jet stream,
at a point of its greatest promise
as it danced along its self-willed
and illogical trajectory…
and alas “revus interruptus”

we balance that fine-brushed line
where dream and fantasy kiss

and then in vain you conjure a continuation
by locking down unfurled eyelids,
casting babalawo and ifa beads
only to meet “resumption access denied”
boldly staring at you opaquely
like the negatives of a black and white picture
from behind your tightly shut eyes!

if wishes dance, flashing silver
like a cloud of minnows past catching
that is what these dreams do, fleeting and fleeing.
such wild gifts resist forced forging;
though we beg the bringer,
she swims away with them, arcing
behind our eyes, unwilling.  

Unyielding to our anxious silent pleas,
ignoring our favored sketched dream scenes and sets,
our preferred casts, co-stars and shooting locations,
smiling, she denies us our feverish aspirations
to statuses of dream directors and procreators

can she midwife one child over another?
if it is love, or flying we ask for
she will bring us falling dreams
or kissing from mouths that differ from desire;
yes, we thirst, and take both the vinegar and sweet
dropped on our lips,
accepting not what is wanted but what is given

***Talk about spontaneous generation!  This started as a response to a “dreams” poem by Susan and bloomed from there. Susan and I (Susan voice  is  italicized here) cooked this up in between Susan getting ready for a teacher’s conference at her son’s school in New York and I was taking a short break at a workshop in Morogoro, Tanzania.