Poem: Dreams

by Jack Brummet

I think about dreams―not drifting
like this, but real R.E.M. dreams.

I don't know which is better―
to dream it or see it,

to see it right now,
or to have seen it.

I don't know which is better,
the memory or the thing itself.

The memory can be repeated forever
but loses fidelity like an old record

and the fictions your mind confects
start filling in the gaps

until the memory becomes a framework
for what we wanted to be, or what should have been.                      

                ---o0o---