DREAM CYCLE: POEM & DREAM
A Dream Cycle at Winter Solsticeby Keren Vishny Limp leaves on parched vines.Soil cracked.Centipede crawls upward.Nothing left.Heart sunk.Cracked window admits the draftI go outside to get warm.Gray.Pink glimmer at the edgesDare I hope for dawn?Soft handsMeet flower’s pulse.Barriers dissolve.Stepping forwardBird flies free.Intentional matchlights the flame.--Keren VishnyDecember 21st, 2016Dream-Cycle was written on the day before my birthday, at winter solstice. I was searching for a solace that eluded me, and longed for renewal- both sensual and spiritual. The lines of poetry came ‘unthought’ as I journaled and worked dreams from the previous nights.In one, I find a dolphin, blown out of the water, a young girl tending to him, splashing him with water from a small puddle to comfort him in his dying. Then I am in my own house, and a woman asks if I am willing to make room for a ‘woman with many burns’.In the other dream, I am leaving an ‘old place’ and entering a new school. An Archetypal Teacher shows me to my bed, and instructs me to light a candle , held in a birdcage-like structure hanging over my bed. In the dream I am afraid to light the match for fear of starting a fire.In working with these dreams, I became more aware of the loss of passionate, joyful play as well as lost connection to a nourishing spiritual life. The dream teacher suggests a simple place to start- the lighting of a candle, which attracts me, but also makes me anxious. The thing that heals reminds me of my wounds. Yet, recognition of my wounds (both the burnt woman and the dolphin blown out of the water) brings me the Soul-Child who comforts me. In writing the poem, I am grappling with an apparent paradox:that the pain and the healing come together. The poem begins with a reckoning of feeling like a parched, withered vine, the only life form present an insect with a hundred legs. As I feel the sadness of this, something begins to move, and I discover ‘the hand that can feel the pulse of a flower’. It is a new way to connect, receive and know. While I didn’t recognize it at the time, these dreams and the writing of this poem were a turning point for me- a really wonderful birthday gift. Since then I have felt a growing spiritual connection and vibrancy - and the freedom to ‘light the intentional match’.KV May 13, 2017Keren Vishny, M.D. is a natural dreamwork practitioner who lives in the Chicago area.For more information about her work please visit her website at www.kerenvishny.com