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Dreaming of Home (in Searching for Kadesh collection)

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poet-e
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Joined: Wed Jun 19, 2019 3:10 pm

Dreaming of Home (in Searching for Kadesh collection)

Post by poet-e » Fri Jun 12, 2020 12:05 pm

Dreaming of Home 

She stands in the doorway; welcoming me with a warm worn wrinkled face, hardened ashy callused hands, nails dulled down by working the orchard soil.  The embraces I long for are still missing. But the off white walls baking in the scolding sun invite me in, telling me how much they missed me and our late night conversations after the fire retired, holding me in the coolness of their inner shade.  These are the walls that shielded us from the dusty winds and the scattered baaah-ing the shepherd boys collected.  My aged, blood browned, tattered and torn dress is tattered and torn no more. It is again the once cream dress I adored, the dress I eagerly watched my mother make, mending it as it aged with me. 

My mother rushes to the fire where she is cooking all the foods I like—the smell of lentil vegetable soup, bread baking that she milled from our grains, and roasting fish fills our house—as I walk in.  We only had fish on special occasions; we did live by the sea, but usually just ate left over lamb or other meat from burnt offerings.  Not today though.   

It’s strange.  Whenever I dream, my pain is gone and I am always walking…my legs lift me up, not like when I am awake.  I stroll through the courtyard, where I played as a child before blemishing my family, roughhousing with my brother and our village friends.  I would chase them on all fours, my hands and knees dirtying and reddening, becoming a bull to be chase and to chase.  I find my father sitting seriously at a table in his room reading one of his scrolls that he rhythmically recited, as he usually did in the daylight.  I would listen and memorize each word in secret.  He gestures that I should go wash for our meal.   

At the washbasin, I see my brother all grown up and back from the sandy mountains.  I thought I’d never see him again.  We splash each other as we wash our hands, like we did when we were little.  Instead of carrying me up on his back like he usually did, he chases me up the wooden ladder, pass our grandparents’ and uncles’ rooms, to where our mother is bringing out the prepared foods.  The most delicious aromas and sights fill my senses, as we gather together to eat as a family again; our mother separating the bones from the fish flesh for us.  

Before the soft fish flesh touched my rough lips, I suddenly awoke to stabbing pains cramping my curled foot.

 
Notes/Qs:
I’m not sure if the dining room would be upstairs and
if the washbasin would be somewhere other than the dining area. 
Did Jewish mothers hug their children?  
Is the voice analyzing/explaining the dream distracting? 
If the father is a priest, even a minor priest, wouldn’t they live by all the markets? What did priest families eat?

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