Feathers

A poem from a dream...

In the dream, I am in a house of some kind, near an open doorway whose threshold is made of red brick. An old man comes from the outside and places a pile of mixed feathers on the threshold and walks away. I run over and kneel next to them. My first impulse is to take the feathers before anyone notices and keep them for myself. But I kneel next to them and slowly trace my fingers over them. 

(Then these words came. I woke up immediately and wrote them down as they came, as a poem.)

Feathers

The colors of my soul
are in the colors
of the birds’ feathers.

In saying yes 
to you I say yes
to life.

Practice is being solid
in a world of unsolid things.

--Stuart

This is another of what Jung would call “big dreams.” I am learning more and more to pay attention to dreams, and to write them down when they come clearly like this one did, as the encounter with the old man and the feathers, and then these three stanzas of a poem.

To ask if it makes sense is to ask the wrong question, I think. There is movement in the images. Something sings.

The initial dream was powerful, with that moment when I gave up grasping and simply ran my fingers over the feathers instead. That was what I was meant to do.

What color is our soul? What are we saying yes to? How do we discern what is real and what is unreal, what has substance and what does not?

Let’s continue listening…

Blessings,

Stuart