Journal of Sacred Work

I begin to think about the first person
to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning…
   -Billy Collins

   I can’t think of a better way to end a meditation series on dreams than with a poem by the great Billy Collins (left) about the very first dream a human being ever had. A goal of poetry is to awaken us to think in new ways. That is the special challenge, and the unique gift, which artists give to caregivers.
   Here is the joy of Billy Collins marvelous poem. Great poets work hard to make there words come to us as gracefully and easily as this…

The First Dream

The Wind is ghosting around the house
tonight
and as I lean against the door of sleep
I begin to think about the first person
to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning 

as the others stood around the fire
draped in the skins of animals
talking to each other only in vowels,
for this was long before the invention
of consonants. 

He might have gone off by himself to sit
on a rock and look into the mist of a
lake
as he tried to tell himself what had
happened,
how he had gone somewhere without going, 

how he had put his arms around the neck
of a beast that the others could touch
only after they had killed it with
stones,
how he felt its breath on his bare neck. 

Then again, the first dream could have
come
to a woman, though she would behave,
I suppose, much the same way,
moving off by herself to be alone near
water, 

except that the curve of her young
shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly
alone,
and if you were there to notice this, 

you might have gone down as the first
person
to ever fall in love with
the sadness of another. 

– Billy Collins

NOTE for Nashville area readers: Come to a special new program – Final Friday Radio Theater will be debuting at 7 pm May 25 at Vine Street Christian Church (directly across from St. Thomas Hospital). It will be hosted by Erie Chapman and will include music, jokes, poetry, and the old time radio feeling.