“The plant or the tree can actually sense you; not in the same way a human senses, but it actually responds to the attention that you give it. And it loves it. . . . You don’t have to hug the tree, you can but it’s not necessary . . . to sense the presence of the tree.” Eckhart Tolle. Paradise Regained: Waiting and Spiritual Wakefulness, 2023/Audiobook.
IN BETWEEN TIME by Victoria Sullivan
Awash in the wind and the chill air,
I awaken on the porch
from dreams weaving about me,
threads of disaster, or threads of indulgence.
That in between time,
half-asleep, half awake:
it is the time that feels most natural to me now.
I sense King Arthur’s knights
riding through the mists of old England,
the presence of something larger than the self,
a fairytale perhaps, a myth,
the dream state.
Those who say they do not dream,
I am amazed. Of course
the neuroscientist would say they do dream
and simply forget.
But I wonder if there are vast arid deserts
inside the souls of those
who’ve lost their dreams.
I don’t mean waking dreams, daydreams,
but that odd mélange of
incidents and perceptions,
that smoky state where you star
in your own inner film.
Waking from the foggy place
requires a certain quiet step
from the bed to the floor,
from the porch into the house.
I drink coffee but I’m still lost
in a whisper of the dream.
And outside in the early morning light
-- how lovely -- all the trees are luminous.
Victoria Sullivan is both a poet and a playwright, with five Equity Showcase productions performed in Manhattan, and productions in Phoenicia and Cooperstown, New York. She teaches literature in the Lifetime Learning Institute at Bard College and co-hosts The Woodstock Roundtable on WDST 100.1 FM. Recently she has been performing spoken word with a jazz band at various Hudson Valley venues.
