I have had the strangest dreams these past few nights.
I dream of the river almost every night now… but, not as it is… instead it is wild and forceful. Tumbling up the banks in white capped eddies, swirling and racing over rocks, carrying leaves and little sticks along.
It is an untamed force that cannot be held by its banks and it glows with the light of the moon.
In my dreams I feel the moon-glowing river deep in my chest warm and beam in response to the pulsing moonlight of the river itself.
We beat as one.
I can see other pulsing moon-lit glows among the trees.
Slim shapes slip between stark birch and trembling aspen.
I feel connected to each little light.
Some lights I know – I can see Barbie by the fence line, her chest radiating a pale glow.
Bess is upriver standing with the stranger who walks the tracks and each of them glow with their own moon light.
Other faces from town that I can identify, but don’t know at all move between the trees and then from the water of the river itself a dozen or more pale white figures rise – like alabaster statues of beautiful young women.
They emerge from the water and climb the trees to reach for the moon.
I wake up with moonlight streaming in my window and across my body in my bed.
I can still feel its strange pulsing beat in my heart.
I walk to the window and stare into the treeline, expecting to see shapes and figures.
But there are only the trees.