The Dreamer by the Sea

Here is a podcast of me reading this poem:

They don't know where I go,

So quiet in the dead of night

The wind stings like fire,

Along with the rain,

Splashing,

Punching me,

With its pins of pain.
   

All the while,

Crush the ground,

Push it down,

Laughing inside at what I've lost,

Outside myself,

Outside belief.

Drift!

Drift ever on,

To nowhere.

No!

To the beach,

To see the dreamer by the sea,

To ponder on what he'll tell me.
   

The dreamer by the sea.

They all say he's mad,

Like me,

Inside me,

The dreamer by the sea,

Lives in a cave,

When he can,

Or else he sits on the rocks,

Until the tide arrives.

Sparks fly from his eyes,

Like stars they glow.
   

He listens to the voices of the pebbles,

How they have endured the beating of time.
He talks with the waves,

And tells me,

About the way things were,

When he was young.

Challenges, asks, knows.
   

The dreamer by the sea.
   

And when I arrive,

He asks me "Why"?

But I can't say,

And he says he knows,

Then shows me how to dream,

How to be me,

On the inside,

How to believe.
   

The dreamer by the sea,

Caresses the night,

With talons of ice,
       

Bright is his light,

Spreads its wings,

Flies into the distance,

Through the deepening blackness,

Warning ships with thoughts,

Flecking the cliffs,

Giving them transparence,
Until they become real,

To me.
       

How ideas I had were never known,

By me,
Inside,

Help me believe.
   

But he knows,

Always knew,

Been squatting on his perch for years,

Millennia I'd say,

Digging up ground,

Making no sound,

Changing shape in the dark,

And hiding by day.
   

The dreamer by the sea.
   

Tortures himself while watching birds die,

Tears himself to shreds and cries.
   

But I sit and watch,

And he tells me all this,

Until I walk back to my bed,

To what is deemed to be real.

Until I walk back to me,
To what I believe.
   

The dreamer by the sea.
   

He says "Goodbye"!

And laughs again,

From the cliff tops,

From the rocks,

In the sea I hear the shuffling of his feet,

In the wind I hear the whispering of his profundity.

All around,

Mixed with the mist,

Swirling in the spray,

He talks to me.
   

Everywhere I watch and feel,

How real it is to me,

How real is he,

And I realise,

I believe in the truth of,

The dreamer by the sea.


This poem was written in the late 1980s. It is again about the search for wisdom in nature and the blurring of the divide between dreams and the waking world. Where is reality? Inside or outside? The search for truth outside always leads to the recognition that truth and reality are inside and depend on the state of ones own consciousness..awake or asleep.