Double Trouble: Recurring Dreams in Tweed (a bit threadbare) and Iron (a bit rusty)

Strange dreams last night: two different recurring threads as I slept and woke, slept and woke, slept and woke, over and over.

The first thread? Classic teaching dream: final exam time, but I've printed out, copied, and distributed the wrong semester's exam to the wrong class. Good students: they tried to answer the questions, tried to grapple with the topics, until someone came forward to point out that they hadn't read this material at all. I try to salvage something from the situation as I return over and over to this situation in the night.

The second thread? Much more heroic, no less anxious: I'm the squad leader of a band of soldiers, garbed in wool and leather and iron, armed with swords or axes, as we move through ruined battlements, a ruined city, at nightfall, seeking some sort of goal, seeking not to be ambushed in the deepening fog and shadow.  Light comes from the moon and from burning buildings.  Smoke chokes the throat, obscuring that moon and those flames.  Something is hunting us, a troop of men? a monster? The anxiety level is high as I struggle, here too, not to make mistakes, struggle to salvage something from the night's foray, even though in the dream I don't quite know, can't quite grasp the things I know I should know, and there is absolutely no one to ask . . . .

"The Armor of Your Virtue"

THE ARMOR OF YOUR VIRTUE

Coffee cups, pastry plates,
Corner booths, and study dates--
The rushing fool who hesitates
Lately finds that his angel is lost.

Should you ever address such divinity
With this litany of virtuous sinning?
Do you dare press this unsuitable case
In the bare face of a model affinity
On the strength of such illusory
And unsubstantiated winning?

Not proven, not proven, not proven--
Do you rue the imprudent fiction,
The innocent, illicit diction?
You ration out your conquests in respect
To consequence, conscience, and blundering.
To a Scotch verdict, no contest you've pled
To govern such botched, besotted hungering.
Never guilty quite, you oddly-kiltered martyr,
With the armor of your virtue left
Virtually without a dent.

Back to the coffee cups, pastry plates,
Corner booths, and study dates--
The stammering fool fails to prevaricate;
Another angel-- oh, hesitate--is lost.

How do you ever qualify for happiness?
How do you ever quantify your joy?
Where's the form for furthering matters
Or the pattern to know and avoid?
Chipped glass, stalled payment,
Standing traffic, walking the pavement--
Till the pang of passing passion's freshly frosted
In an ashen hour of friendly fashioning.

Coffee cups, pastry plates,
Corner booths, and study dates--
The fearful fool bravely hesitates,
Though fortune favors a state of grace,
And finds his angel is lost.

Finally, you fear shyly she will be offended.
If only she could condescend to be flattered
By the curtained confession still to be amended,
Still to be shuttered and shattered.

Coffee cups, pastry plates,
Corner booths, and study dates--
The brazen fool still hesitates,
For fortune favors a state of grace,
As he finds his angel is lost.

--Matt Duckworth


(I wrote this poem back in 1996 on my 35th birthday.  Lightly edited recently.)