Two Hundred and Twenty One

I’ve read three articles recently that explained why we’re all dreaming more often now—or rather, since the experts say we dream every night, why our dreams are more vivid now, so that we remember them when we wake.  It’s due to the lack of activity in our waking lives, now that everyone is staying home, so that our unconscious minds are compensating.

My dreams used to be vivid, years ago.  I no longer remember them now.  But as I thought about it, I realized that I have been having a recurring dream.  Not vivid, but short and simple.

I’m in a large building of cool white marble.  It’s not the building I used to dream of—Vanity Fair cum Tower of Babel—nor am I lost in it, as I was in those dreams, and looking for her.  I no longer look for her.  But there is a woman.

She’s sitting at a desk.  I ask her for directions.

It’s the building where I went to pay my taxes, and she’s the woman who directed me.  It’s both a mausoleum and a government building because the only things in this life that we can be sure of are death and taxes.

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.

And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? ... in the dust, in the cool tombs?

Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns ... tell me if the lovers are losers ... tell me if any get more than the lovers ... in the dust ... in the cool tombs.