Fever Dreams

A few days in bed with Pneumonia,
lost in a strange timelessness,
vague and unsure whether you are unsettled or content
in the uselessness.

You think of Coleredge, or Poe, or Sherlock Holmes
in their opium dens, escaping their smog bound worlds,
full of dreams and colors and wisps
that you can not quite grasp. Beautiful in a way,

but whatever you see disappears as soon as you touch it,
and dreams, well designed and thought out,
part of your every day life and purpose,
dissappear as soon as you try to do the work of them.

You slept a lot. And so there were the dreams of sleep
and the dreams of sickness and fever, for a time
intermingled.

It was not entirely unpleasant. If one could stay there,
safe, fed, loved, it would have a certain appeal,
but there is always the coming back, the return,
hard and noisy to a world that has gone on

while you have drifted.

About this poem

Inspired by a bout of pneumonia last week. Being sick, really sick, is quite the mind experience and I found myself thinking of those who lived in opium dens in London, and elsewhere. I think of the fantasies or delusions that many of us have used to stave off reality, and about a pair of near death experiences in my life and how they all have that hard crash back into real life.

Mostly this was just for fun. No life lessons attached. The picture was taken in Tintagle, England. One of my favorite places and on the short places of “other lands” I could easily pack up and move to.

Tom