Fire Fly Dream

Some dreams insist on expanding outwards to meet the collective that helped them to be dreamt. 

In my dream, I join a group of runners, caught up in some kind of collective flight response, running through the dark night. I run ahead alone, through pitch darkness with only my breath for company. I run, following my breath until I reach a point of stillness. A field opens up, parts of it lit up with elf and fairy lights, which then multiply and become fireflies popping and dancing in the night sky. I am in awe of the magnificence of what has emerged from the dark, with a desire to share this beauty with the rest of the world. 

I get up and go to the sea to swim. I bump into an old friend, and we get talking about the old tree that looks over the beach, who is due to be felled soon to make way for a bridge. "It has to go", the council and planners say. It doesn't, my friend and I agree. It would only take some imagination to save this tree. But budgets and planning don't allow for such sense. We discuss how there's so much beauty and abundance in the world that often goes unnoticed in the threat response that tightens around the world.

I share my dream. 

My friend says it reminds her of this poem, The Starlight Sky', by Gerard Manley Hopkins. 

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!

   O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

   The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!

Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!

The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!

   Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!

   Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare! 

Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then! — What? — Prayer, patience, alms, vows.

Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!

   Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!

These are indeed the barn; withindoors house

The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse

   Christ home, Christ and his mother, and all his hallows.

We look it up and find ourselves reciting it in unison to the old tree soon to be felled, to the tides that carry us, to the pebbles warming our feet. And soon, this dream we have of sharing the beauty is alive and out there, supported by a poem, powered by our hearts.  

Upon looking into this poem some more, I discovered that it may have been written in response to Hopkins missing an eclipse in 1877. If you haven't heard, there's an eclipse happening later today. 

Look, look up at the skies!