Counting Historical Patterns in my Sleep:

I often dreamt of a crocodile, mouth agape,

luminous green too bright, as if drawn

from a children’s picture book,

though the teeth were yellow and real

as nightmares can sometimes be.

This crocodile made its way regularly

up the old family driveway and into the house, 

though I screamed and warned from the window, 

I even attempted barricades; it went from room 

to room, hungrily, as we fled, screaming.

Except, always, for my stumbling grandfather

who was forever caught by the crocodile

and lost his left leg just below the knee

while his right hand banged as hard as he could

upon the crocodile’s indifferent, green head.

Years later, as a man of seventy, my grandfather

suffered a stroke, survived, but complications

had their way and he lost his left leg

just below his knee while that right arm

of his died and hung by his side listlessly.

That nightmare haunted me for many years,

the dream of the crocodile, my grandfather and me,

I’d often wake in the night bathed in sweat

or, if it was particularly nasty, urine;

a smell that clings still these many years distant,

Even now with my forty-seven year old mind

I think about my grandfather, my dream and me.

I wonder if there is some mysterious symmetry that plays dot to dot

through time with a child’s nightmares, an old man’s body

and the way life’s patterns are revealed historically.