Stylized image of a penguin standing on a still partially curled square of sod that is resting on a stack of tea cups. There is one tea cup beside the penguin on top of the sod.
This is a humorous piece I wrote several years ago and I think it is about time I shared it on this blog.
I had a strange dream last night, really strange for me because it didn’t have a proper plot and most of my dreams have a plot. A bunch of birds were creating nests in the yard of the home I used to live in with my mother. My mother just sold her house, so I guess it has been in my thoughts lately.
Anyway, there was a whole flock of these birds making nests everywhere on the ground. They were packed in like sea birds nesting on a small island, all competing for space and I knew that as time went on there would be fewer and fewer nests as the winners forced the others to leave. Knowing what lies in the future is pretty typical for my dreams, as if my dreams are books that I’m rereading.
The strangest part of the dream was the surreal imagery. The birds were all making nests out rolls of sod and collections of china. Each bird had a collection of perfect, unblemished tea cups with matching saucers stuffed underneath their sod blankets. While the ones which had been kicked out waddled away with their belongings, which were tumbled haphazardly into wheeled plastic bins with large stiff rectangular handles that the birds pushed against, like little horses pulling carriages.
But the birds were still leaving stacks and stacks of china behind, littered on the ground and in heaps in the flower beds and I was following after them and their grey rolling bins with my hands full of the perfect tea cups on matching saucers telling those birds that they had to take it all with them. They couldn’t just leave the tea cups because I had no where to put them.
