In Midnight Sleep
In midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded--of that indescribable
look;
Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Of scenes of nature, fields and mountains;
Of skies, so beauteous after a storm--and at night the moon so
unearthly bright,
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather
the heaps,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Long, long have they pass'd--faces and trenches and fields;
Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure--or away
from the fallen,
Onward I sped at the time--But now of their forms at night,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
- Walt Whitman
11-2-03
I was in a house looking out the window at a whole line of tornadoes winding along the sky, telling Linda to look at them. She is in another room.
There is a power plant in the distance. I watch as four of the tornadoes join to make one big tornado and then, on the left, the power plant catches on fire.
I am relaying this all to Linda who is looking out the window in the other room.
Then the power plant begins to explode. I am yelling "It's exploding!" and I run out of the room as the flames get closer.
I am out of the room when the windows explode spraying glass and hot coals and sparks across the floor at my feet.
I think that Linda was still looking out the window, her nose pressed to the glass when it exploded.
Sometimes my dreams are not that cheerful, but this is one of the very few where someone close to me gets hurt. The other was when I dreamt that a friend had fallen out of a boat and drowned.
I was glad to see my friend Linda the next day...
