These selected Waking Dreams form part of the prose text of a book I wrote in 2001-02, entitled Mira Mala.  They correspond with the verses in my Archives files from October 2001 to mid-January 2002.
 

Honey

I AM standing in a field of wildflowers, looking closely at one very beautiful and fragrant purple bloom.  In it is a large flying insect with iridescent wings.  I know it is a very special and magical kind of bee.  As I watch it, I feel my hand begin to swell and at first itch and then burn.  I turn my attention to that as the swelling comes to a head which then opens up.  A bee just like the one in the flower crawls out of it, and the wound instantly heals.  My bee walks toward the one in the flower, they stroke each other with their antennae, and then they fly away together.  When I look at the flower again, it has turned into a hand, a hand that is connected to a person I cannot raise my head to see.  Their fingers reach toward mine.  Our fingers enlace.
 
 

The Weaving of Branches

I AM standing in a grove of trees, looking up at the branches above my head.  As I watch, they sway in the breeze and interweave themselves—lightly at first, then ever more tightly together.  Slowly I realize that they are forming a dome that arches high above me.  A flock of tiny pale birds comes to roost among them.  The light that reaches through is fading; night is falling.  The birds all begin to sing and as they do, they shine in the deepening darkness, like constellations of living stars.  Now a soft white light begins to trickle through an opening in the center of the dome that I did not notice before.  The brilliance increases.  By and by, I see the full Moon align itself with the opening and flood the grove.  The flock of birds, still singing, aims for its center and flies away.
 
 

Pitch Pine

I AM looking up into the branches of a great pine tree.  It is covered with cones, a few of which are dropping at my feet.  They are so sticky with pitch that when I pick one up, it clings to my hand.  I try to put it down, but it is stuck fast.  This disturbs me.  I shake my hand fiercely to free myself of it.  It flies to the ground and hits it with a thud.  When I glance down at my hand, I see that it is covered with downy feathers.  I look at what I thought was a pine cone, and realize that it is a little bird.  It is lying ominously still—is it dead?  I kneel and carefully reach out to touch it with just the tip of my finger.  It is still breathing, and it stirs slightly at my touch.  I think it is just stunned.  I hope it will be all right.
 
 

The Rotting Fence

I AM following the outline of an old rail fence that runs around a plot of ground I have noticed to be strangely fertile.  The rails are rotting and falling in. Once when I walked here earlier, carelessly, looking ahead instead of at my feet, I tripped over a stray rail, kicking into its rotting core and scattering it.  Now it is evening and the sky is darkening rapidly and I am standing in the same place where I fell down earlier.  I am beginning to see that the rotting wood is giving off a faint phosphorescent glow.  This fascinates me and I lean down and look at it for a good while.  When I start to walk on, night has fallen, and my eyes have adjusted to its blackness.  I can see that the entire outline of the old fence is glowing in the dark.
 
 

The Funeral Flowers

I AM carrying a great sheaf of lilies in my arms.  Their deep sweet scent grows heavier and heavier until I must put them down and rest.  The path I am walking is very long.  As I pause, I look down along it for as far as I can see.  When I feel it is time to walk on again, I start to reach down to pick up the lilies, but where I laid them down I now find the seemingly-lifeless body of a fair young man.  The scent of flowers is still very heavy, but the breeze lifts just then and begins to carry it away.  I look off in the direction in which it is carrying the fragrance, as if I could see it go.  When I look down again, the man has disappeared.
 
 

The Sudden Release

I AM reaching up for a little carved stone bird that stands on a very high shelf in my room.  Up on my tiptoes, I strain—my fingers brush it, but I start to fall and as I do, I catch myself and with a stray wave of my hand, I knock the fragile bird to the floor.  It lies before me, smashed.  Inside it, in a hollow chamber I never knew was there, was a tiny scroll tied with colored threads.  From among the fragments, its sudden mystery lifts the hair of my neck.  I reach for it, slip the threads off one end, and unroll it.  It is inscribed with a series of ever so delicate verses in praise of a rose.  The parchment on which they are written is impregnated with the fragrance of roses, and I breathe of it deep and long.  Then I am waking in my bed.  The room is filled with the scent of roses.  From where I lie, I look to the window, and there on the ledge is a bird.  It is staring intently at me, and our eyes meet and lock.  After a moment it flies away.
 
 

The Book

I AM reading a very old book that has many color plates depicting beautiful and hauntingly familiar landscapes.  After studying one of them, I start to turn the page, and as I do, I see light shine through it.  It is an entirely empty transparent panel.  The page behind it is covered with words.  When I lay the transparent page down again, the landscape reappears.  It shows a grove of evergreen trees and a small white marble temple….
 
 

The Shining Waves

I AM working by the aid of a very small light late at night when something begins to distract my mind.  It is nothing bad, whatever it is, but it persistently demands my attention.  After a while I tire of fighting it and get up to pace about the room until my thoughts settle.  Soon, with no thought of how I got there, I find myself standing at the window.  The sea in the distance is glowing with the light of the Moon.  No—that is what is so strange.  The sea is glowing; its entire face is bright.  But this is the night of the new Moon.  The sky is dark.  The sea is brilliant with a source of light all its own.
 
 

The Candle-Cast Shadows

YOU WERE sitting alone by the light of a single candle, staring forlornly at the wall.  There the shadows danced and swayed.  You failed to notice that they formed distinct male and female silhouettes.  It was not beyond the realm of possibility that they were cast by a man and a woman who were cautiously trying to come together.
 
 

In the Depths of Your Reflection

YOU WERE staring so deeply into the eyes of your reflection in the mirror that you forgot that the glass was not the still face of live water.  There you felt a strange wind softly blowing.  I could see what you were seeing—reflected in your eyes was a little boat that was reaching safe harbor.
 
 

The Empty Boat

YOU WERE drifting by yourself in a little boat on the pond near the center of the island.  I watched from afar as you leaned out, looked down into the depths of the clear, still water, and then slipped over the side and disappeared.  I waited for a long time for you to resurface, but you never did.  Finally, after the sky began to darken, I returned home.  When I arrived, before I could open my own front door, it opened for me, and you stood across the threshold, waiting.
 

Deep Underground

YOU WERE dancing in your room again, deep in the dark of the night.  You were oblivious to its presence, but far below you was the hollow chamber from which I pursue my dreams.  That night, I was watching my ceiling:  Yes!  Root-fibers were reaching through the soil, into the air above my head.  Soon the end of the tap-root emerged.  I knew it by its invisible shimmer—the root of the birds’-nest tree had found my lair.
 
 

The Age of the Universe

YOU WERE dancing in your room again; I could hear you overhead.  If I were a tree with a growth ring for every circle you have traced, I would be the age of the universe—and I AM..
 
 

The Sailor

YOU WERE staring with amazement at the figure before you, a fair young man who stood with his body facing away from you but who twisted halfway around to smile and offer you his hand.  He was altogether naked but for a white sail that rippled, partially unfurled, from his back.  The top of the sail was secured by a cord to a tangle of his hair.  The bottom of the sail was similarly tied by a cord that passed between his legs to where you could not see.
 
 

Resonance

YOU WERE wondering why you could not sleep.  The whole room seemed to quiver; the very moonlight seemed to be falling in waves.  You rose and walked outside, and when you turned to look back, you distinctly saw the building tremble.  All the ground beneath your feet is riddled, as you are beginning to know.
 
 

The Cloud Banks

YOU WERE waiting on the hill at the doorstep of the lunarium.  Storm clouds were massing over the sea and moving inland, bearing volumes of rain that could easily flood the island up to the hills that rise at its center.  A flash of lightning revealed a sail, a swath of white coming into the restless shallows.  The clouds almost seemed to follow it.  Would that sailor come seeking dry ground—and you?  Do you not hear that foreign bird calling again?
 
 

The Lens

HE IS grinding a lens, a prism, which he will place in an opening at the highest point of the roof of the lunarium.  Made of no common crystal, it will function with perfect clarity regardless of daylight or rain, finding the trace of true moonlight hiding behind any weather’s sky.  It will permit me to see where I please, and also cast delicate moonbows over the altar where I perform my best work.
 
 

The Scroll

HE IS holding out a scroll which he unrolls on and on, yet the same picture hangs in place.  This time, I do not merely observe—I recall the other dream-books I have seen, and their mysterious pictures.  A scroll is a different sort of book, from a different place, and yet this picture, this depicted scene of lovers and foliage—this can, by small mental effort, be transposed upon scenes I have been shown.  I recognize the lovers again, in different garb but with similar features.  As I keep unrolling the scroll, I remember more and more.  What was I thinking?  He is holding a scroll, and the scene depicted shows two horses—a lightly-dappled mare of grey so pale she seems almost silver, and a stallion of black with a few strands of white in his mane.  But why do I also see birds with outstretched wings?
 
 

In the Exact Center

There is a hole in the floor of the temple’s main chamber, in the exact center of the room.  Over it is a stone slab that seals it.  I remove the slab to find a dead body hanging down by a rope around its neck into the mouth of a well.  The body—I cannot be mistaken; it is clearly dead—begins to move.  Its eyes roll back, then toward me, and its mouth begins to work.  My eyes fly wide open.  I look out at the room before me, and see the circle I have trodden into the floor by dancing.
 
 

The Pearl Ring

HE IS only present in the form of a thought, but a glowing red-purple flower seems to beckon me toward it, and I approach.  When I reach out to touch it, it snaps shut on my hand.  It won’t let go, how ever much I pull.  A feeling like a faint spirit voice tells me I should wait, and so I do—so long that the stars rise, and then the bright Moon.  When its light streams full on the flower, it opens.  Two bees with wings that glitter iridescent in the moonlight emerge from its center and fly away.  I look at my hand, which is fine—I even notice that an old scar has disappeared.  And—on my finger is a ring set with a large gleaming pearl.
 
 

The Lovers

HE IS sitting close beside me on a hillside above the sea.  I cannot quite bring myself to look at him.  Instead, I stare out over the water as he begins to hum an old familiar tune.  What is it?  I cannot place it, but I can see within myself what it reminds me of:  Two lovers are walking hand-in-hand under a very dark rain.  It dyes their clothing as it drenches them.  Their hands are full of flowers, branches of blossom with glowing white petals.  The sea nearby is rising; it rushes inland, the same dark color as the rain, and instantly it surrounds and covers the pair.  The flowers they were holding release their petals, which drift unstained on the dark water, glowing like stars.  They form letters, then words—the words to a love-spell I fall under as I read.  Now two lovers are rising up out of the water, glowing and tall.  They move swiftly, hand-in-hand, toward us.  I dare not meet their eyes, but I turn to you and meet yours.
 
 

The Leaking Blue-Black Sea

HE IS lying beside me in the night, but when I wake, I feel a chill.  I look over toward him, and find a skeleton—an old and friable, but still intact, set of bones.  Strangely, this does not trouble me, but I feel compelled to light a candle and look more closely.  Aye:  The bones are stained in places and the bed beneath them is wet because a fluid has been leaking out of them, and that fluid is blue-black, like ink.  I wet my fingers with it and anoint my brow and each eyelid.  As soon as I do, my perspective shifts:  I am now looking down by night on a sea of the same blue-black color.  Something at its center catches my eye.  By the light of the Moon, which is bright overhead, out of my field of vision but within my understanding, I can see—aye, of course:  It is my island; the Moon is gleaming on the white lunarium temple.  A storm is coming; the waves are wild and high.
 
 

The Unwaning Light

HE IS as YOU ARE, and in his/your eyes, I see reflected a lovely white marble tower, most graceful, seemingly hanging weightless against the night sky.  The Moon shines down upon it so strongly that it begins to yield beneath the burden, fraught with living silver.  The ground around it, as I can tell by the familiar low-growing plants and bushes, is marshy, and soon the tower begins to sink.  As I watch, it slips deeper and deeper into the Earth, a round shaft of stone that penetrates with a grave, steady might.  Soon it is gone from sight altogether but for the ring of outer wall, the top of which now stands a foot or two above ground-level.  Water fills the ring and bubbles slightly over the edge:  The stone shaft has encircled the spring that created the marsh.  The two together have now become a luminous well from which a slender stream proceeds.  As the Moon sinks, I realize that the aura of light about the well does not depend on its presence; the sky is darkening swiftly, but the well, both the water and the stone, are glowing with their own source of light.
 
 

Who and Where You Truly Are

YOU ARE present at all times now to remind me that I can breathe water.  Moon in the sky, diamond light in your eyes, pearl ring on my hand, the tune you are humming, the petals that drift on the sea—these tell me that all of a beautiful, still-living ancient world has come home to me.  I cannot recall whether this is waking or dreaming, and do not care, but somewhere a faraway sigh remains unsatisfied.  This sings, all this world whose words are our true chosen fate, and yet the sighing voice pines.

Silence waits softly behind all this world of breathing water-sky.
Silence is the deeper spirit-gate through which we must fly.