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Palm Dream

Dreamed 1984 or before by Skip Renker


After lifeline and heartline,
after what I carried in
and where I am, she
brings me to the edge
of the palm, down
along the moon.

"Look up," she says, "over
my shoulder." I see
a rope ladder or high-flung
spider's web, anchored
in a pool, ascending
toward Orion. "Climb,"

she says, and I trust
the goat in me, up, up--
as I look back,
the web goes wooden,
steps and railings splinter,
legs make frenzied angles.

I try to shout but I've lost
all voice. One hand holds.
The other opens to her
down on earth, face
like a far planet. "Wings,"
she calls. "Wings."

EDITOR'S NOTE

This could be read as a simple nightmare in which things get worse and worse by degrees until all choices are impossible or fatal; but I see something else here. If Renker trusted this palmist's reading enough to climb the latter she advises, why not trust this final long-distance reading of his palm too? Maybe he CAN grow wings. She apparently sees the potential.

I often urge dreamworkers, especially novices, not to bother with lucid dreaming; but going lucid here would solve Renker's problem. Or would it? Maybe the dream's point isn't whether he climbs or falls, or even if he lives or dies, but if he trusts his anima, his reader. She sees latent wings. Does he believe her?

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Dreamworks: an Interdisciplinary Quarterly (v.4, no.1, 1984, p.25)


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