The imagery here is drawn from an undated journal entry, which is itself likely drawn from a dream. In recently reading it over, I thought that it could be turned into a poem, and so I gave it a whirl.
Anima
She emerged slowly, like sun
through mist, and walked toward me.
Her eyes were the color of ice
from deep in an ancient glacier.
Her hair fell in waves around slightly
freckled collarbones like late summer
grasslands rolling in the wind.
She
raised arms and placed slender
fingers over my shoulders, tilting
bright brows forward as she looked
me in the eyes. Like an aspen leaf
on the gentlest breeze, I trembled,
entranced, overcome. Why would
something so beautiful, so perfect,
emerge from the fog of my life
to find me?
There was no time
in the fog, only moments, uncertainty.
In the moment she emerged and lay
cool hands to my skin, insight.
“Who are you?” I asked. She
only cupped one hand behind my neck,
the other behind my head, and pulled,
gently, until my right cheek took pause
in the curve of her neck.
Here I could feel
her pulse against my jaw, my lips. It felt
like stories, hints of long ago carried on
the bright blood of time to now. It moved
with the cadence of what could be, what
has been.
My blood, so long subdued by the ever
present mist, stirred. She pulled back,
slowly, and with the faintest smile
glowing from her cheeks like the moon,
turned away, taking my right hand.
“Now that you have found me,” she
finally spoke, voice like a still, slow
stream easing over rocks and pebbles,
sliding among grasses and alders, “I will
always be near.”
“Always.”
I took my eyes from her flowing figure,
from the curled sunrise of her hair,
and saw, for the first time ever, shapes
take form in the mist.
It was beginning to thin.
I’ve had dreams like this throughout my life as far back as I can remember. The mood and feeling of the dreams were always similar, though the face and form of the woman would change. It has occurred to me that she could represent my anima, that feminine aspect of a man’s psyche discussed in Jungian psychology. The title could just as well be “Sophia,” as this is the term used for Jung’s final phase of anima development, and I feel the figure in this dream could represent a degree of integration with Sophia, a process that has been ongoing for many years.
