The National Poetry Writing Challenge today called for a surrealist prose poem.

Google’s answer to what elements are needed in a surrealistic prose poem are as follows;

The main elements of surrealism include the integration of dreams and fantasies into reality, the exploration of the unconscious mind, and the use of free imagination.

Okay, here goes my effort, for better or worse:

Who Knows Where I’m Going, and Who Knows When I’ll Get There?

When I saw you in my dream last night, you were sitting high in a cedar tree, smiling down at me. I wondered why you were up there but thought that was your business, not mine, so I headed down to the river for a quick underwater swim. There, besides seeing the pink, green, and blue fish that were swimming alongside me, I spied you again, but this time you were peeking around a rock underneath the water. Your hair was long and fanned out all around your head like a halo, and I had a dread come over me that you had died. I didn’t like that one bit, so I flipped over in bed and pushed that dream away. Instead, I was walking down a long dirt road with cattle grazing on either side and I thought to myself, “My goodness, this road is surely symbolic of my life or relationships or perhaps adventures to come.” And with that thought, you waved at me from the back of a longhorn cow, and I waved back, happy we were there together on that warm sunny day, just the two of us, except for a dozen or so longhorns that seemed perfectly happy to share their home with us. I was certain we were destined to be there forever, but then you disappeared again, and I realized life always changes, and I have to accept that I can’t predict what is to come. You popped back up just long enough to give me a long nod. I knew that you knew that I was getting somewhere, even if most people would never understand how that happened. After all, from their perspective, I was sitting still. But you knew, and I was glad.