.

Life, actually…

.

ONLY ONE PERCHANCE PER DREAM, PLEASE

.

How would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar?

.

Long, long ago we Down South village playmates used to dream about doing things like star-swinging and moonbeam-toting.

.

Dreams were our main source of entertainment. We daydreamed, night dreamed, imagined the impossible, explored the corners of the universe without moving an inch.

.

Grownups respected our outrageous imaginations. They couldn’t ground us for thinking and dreaming, so they let us run wild inside.

.

After all, they were kids like us just a couple of decades earlier.

.

Grownups even understood that dreams could become nightmares at times. They were there to comfort us in the feverish wee hours of the morning.

.

One nightmare:

.

Cold steel-blue flames are swooping over a field across the street from our home, the field we play in each day.

.

But in this nervous dream the fire does not produce heat. I am in the field, running through those cold steel-blue flames, trying to escape. But escape from what? Escape to where? How will I know when I’m safe from the flames? Since the flames are harmless, why am I running from them? Should I stop and embrace the flames, respect the flames, learn to live within the flames?

.

I am panicky. I scream.

.

I awaken to the humid world into which I was delivered just a few years ago.

.

Cool hands check my brow. Large loving adults soothe me and tuck me in.

.

My unfettered imagination is once again safely anchored, allowing me time to recuperate and prepare for capturing future moonbeams in jars.

.

The moonbeams become fireflies, so I release them back to their world after a while. After all, they were here long before me. They will be here long after I myself become a dream.

.

Maybe by then I’ll learn how to swing on a star

.

© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

.