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Chickadees

Dreamed c.2000? by Peggy Bowman

I dream of chickadees,
bold and talkative,
so close, I feel the press
of wing beats, whisper touches
caressing my face.

I hang upside down
and fly with them
(what audacity!)
Yet I persist, join
their avian games.

On the street below,
a hurdy-gurdy man
celebrates our remarkable play,
cranking faster, faster

until notes rise up, take wing,
like little birds,
and fly with us.

The monkey claps its paws
         and waves;
all the people look up,
         amazed -

I smile.

--Peggy Bowman
EDITOR'S NOTES

AUTHOR: Bowman was part of a California circle of artists and writers including poets Kenneth Patchen & Barbara Paine and painters Richard Bowman (Peggy's husband) and my mother, Marcia Pagels; so I knew PB, though not well.

SOURCE: PB's published work is imagist and in the moment; no dream narratives! But in my mother's copy of PB's collection POEMS (1984), I found some letters from PB containing about a dozen later poems, as far as I know unpublished. The last one was this. Its envelope's undated, but the shift in tone hints it's much later, circa 2000. Or maybe dreams just force you out of your habitual style.

TITLE: The manuscript is titled just Dream, not the most helpful title on a site with thousands of... you know. For obvious reasons I indexed it as Chickadees.

--Chris Wayan

LISTS AND LINKS: birds - transformation - flight - music - poems - from this circle: B.G. Paine's Time with a Nighthead & J.L. Woehler's With Wild & Turquoise Eyes

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