The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight <br />and as I lean against the door of sleep <br />I begin to think about the first person to dream, <br />how quiet he must have seemed the next morning <br /> <br />as the others stood around the fire <br />draped in the skins of animals <br />talking to each other only in vowels, <br />for this was long before the invention of consonants. <br /> <br />He might have gone off by himself to sit <br />on a rock and look into the mist of a lake <br />as he tried to tell himself what had happened, <br />how he had gone somewhere without going, <br /> <br />how he had put his arms around the neck <br />of a beast that the others could touch <br />only after they had killed it with stones, <br />how he felt its breath on his bare neck. <br /> <br />Then again, the first dream could have come <br />to a woman, though she would behave, <br />I suppose, much the same way, <br />moving off by herself to be alone near water, <br /> <br />except that the curve of her young shoulders <br />and the tilt of her downcast head <br />would make her appear to be terribly alone, <br />and if you were there to notice this, <br /> <br />you might have gone down as the first person <br />to ever fall in love with the sadness of another.<br /><br />Billy Collins<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-first-dream/
