Today's poem is by Diane Seuss

He dreamed he cared, and woke
       

to the feeling of having cared, an unfamiliar
feeling, and wanted me to know
he'd dreamed he cared, and I,
having only just awakened from my own
dream, a dream of being released
from caring, had to recover
the memory of how to care
about someone else's dream.
He said he dreamed he cared, for one,

about prestige, a deeply buried
dream, for one, of the working class.
There is shame in it, the craving
for prestige. Even if the craving
is pea-sized, it is mighty, though
what good is it, it does not
feed or bury you.
To crave something outside
one's purview is a nightmare,

not a dream.
Even if something is attained,
in a nightmare, in a dream,
it will be snatched away on waking.
Dreams are not maps.
They are miniature, acute torments,
like the music of songbirds outside
of factories, invented
to keep you in line.

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Copyright © 2024 Diane Seuss All rights reserved
from Asheville Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission