I was blissfully happy when I wrote this, basking in sunshine on the bus, and  I thought I might call it Commute, or Daydream, but it was written with someone in mind and Morpheus just ties everything up nicely with added (unwarranted) gravitas. I hope.

Some of the… ‘themes’ in this, most notably the corporeal identity of an idea, had been hanging around my head in disembodied couplets and butchered sonnets for a while- I have some notes here-

from May this year

I miss you

Though I don’t feel as if I am missing anything

The usual gutted sensation - I don’t have it

But in dreams

My avatar treads the perimeter

Of something that is yours

Then, and now, and always

In dreams

The sky is overcast

The sun is muted, the sand is endless

An idea gets about in your shape

And the stars are dry eyed

and from June, a drabble I wrote while I was sick - the same sickness as produced Lucy- and on the bus, which has been outshone and therefore abandoned. It doesn’t have any obvious relation, but missing anybody makes everything seem way worse, and I was wallowing a bit in my own self pity:

pale waking walking colourless

ten days since the sickness came

breathing shaking memory lapses

can’t recall how I got this way

fever dreams and foetal shivers

fractured nights and dimming days

As for the Nazca lines, I developed a fascination with them early, watching docos with Mum. I read some godawful fiction about them too, but either way I thought they were beautiful, colossal testaments to both the human desire to represent our experience and the age-old hope that someone out there cares.

The second last line- ‘an undeciphered tongue’s its mould’ I sometimes think would go better as ‘in an undeciphered tongue it’s told’, but I feel like that makes the connection to the last line more suggestive of the idea that the lines should be understood, rather than that they are beyond understanding, which is more truthful at the end of the day.

Happy poems are quite an achievement for me. Happiness is so easy to express by action and social behaviour, writing it down seems like a waste, and often results in absolute tripe. So. I’m quite proud of this.

An idea walks in your shape

Leaves white ashes in its wake

Writing a message for the sky

Nazca lines across my mind

An un-deciphered tongue’s its mold

But all my dreams have turned to gold

(Source: emma-vanessa.deviantart.com)