my subconscious works hard

the mentor of a dream

the familiar trail opens the woods before me,

and I slip fast among friends

of tree and stone and dropping creek,

until it’s time to turn around and head back,

I start down a different way to return,

a place where the woods open to sun and road and house,

I joy in running,

making great leaps into the air,

and I feel like I’m flying,

a brief touch on the trail 

and I bound again,

the way is new,

but I’m sure it will reconnect with what I know,

I check my watch and I’m on schedule,

then the trail, which was heading back to the familiar,

peters out into but hints of possible ways,

I see someone in a house, knock at the door,

and the person inside laughs at my confusion

and asks if I want to know the trail,

he tells me where it is but his face turns all quizzical

about where the trail will come out,

I name where I started,

and that name doesn’t register for him,

instead he names two roads where it goes,

numbers I don’t recognize,

still he reassures me a bit that the trail

is of the area I know, though maybe not,

I wake then, enough into consciousness

to realize my subconscious is working as hard as it can

to make sense of where we are now,

and the indeterminacy of where we’re going,

for now where we are feels fine,

until I look around and realize this path is new,

one I haven’t travelled,

one I do not know for sure where it will come out,

as I began to wake at 5:00 a.m. this morning,

I felt myself an anxious child

mentored by my subconscious self,

a self who deals with the titanic possibilities

my conscious self would rather leap over

and pretend that the path before us is charted,

and will get us home.

by Henry H. Walker

March 24, ‘20