Occasionally I will wake in the morning with a dream that I can fly.  Once, in the space of a couple of weeks, this dream had recurred three times.  The secret, it seemed to me, was in the shoulders.  The power to lift into the air rested in the shoulders, and when the leap was made, the rest of the body had no choice but to follow. 

As I flew I thought of developing still further power.  I felt I could increase the speed of my flight.  I could increase the speed of all my motion.  I could then focus on increasing my strength until it felt superhuman.  Of course, I woke again, a third time, full of confidence and faith.  I did not want to question the dreams, or even to try to understand them.  It was more than sufficient - it was an answer to prayer - just to awake feeling confident again. 

And yet I will question the mechanics of dreaming.  What is the dreaming mind?  A regulator of the spirit?  Some built in gauge that automatically adjusts temperature and humidity of the soul? I had been living in such dry and dusty despair, praying for relief to feel some measure of faith and confidence again, or only the slightest touch of hope, when, of a sudden, I had repeated dreams that I was swimming in it, in the vast blue expanse of hope, as if it were a sky, or an ocean. 

It is at once both alarming and incredibly exciting to believe the secret of all our outcomes rests entirely within us, that when we plead to heaven for help, some inherent capacity within us unleashes its power and provides the necessary aid.  Could it possibly be true when we pray to God for power to overcome, He simply introduces us to some hidden recess of our own spirit that itself harbors the necessary tools for strength, renewal and resolution?

Everything, it would seem, pertaining to our peace and joy is driven by belief.  A prayer is evidently answered, or so I believe, and the Father of my spirit, again I believe, still cares for me.  And my perception of the whole world transforms accordingly.  A monarch on the wing skitters about the butterfly weed outside my study window, and it is no longer simply sustaining itself with a search for some secret nectar, but demonstrating in the cut and turn of its clumsy flight the very motions of happiness.  A blue jay swoops to our feeder, newly filled after two weeks of emptiness, the first bird to discover the return of the dole, and it becomes the very harbinger of new hope. 

Always the daily routines for survival continue and always they eventually prove successful in one way or another.  And then my six-year-old daughter walks into my study, dressed in her white nightgown, and with the sun shining in upon us, I tell her she is filled with light, like an angel of God.  I can barely look upon her and keep my eyes open, she is so dazzling.  Or so I tell her, and it is pleasant to believe, so I do. 

Once again, I readily succumb - I am converted - to the extraordinary possibilities of belief, even in an ordinary moment.  It is simply another one of the ways of flying, and of dreaming, and of coping. 

Poetry is cut from this same homespun - the flight and the dream that generate from a common moment of the hour.  We wrap ourselves in this cloth and it, too, warms the soul to another way of coping.  Perhaps one of the finest English poems on this subject is Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats. 

Keats wrote the poem in May 1819, at the age of 23, reportedly in the space of just a few hours, inspired by the song of a nightingale that nested near his house.  In the midst of heartache and pain, in a dreary world "where but to think is to be full of sorrow", Keats for a brief moment hears the plaintive song of a nightingale and is utterly transfigured - he flies to an extraordinarily strange, new world on the "viewless wings of Poesy."

Left behind is the world of mortality, "where men sit and hear each other groan" beneath "the Queen Moon... clustered around by all her starry Fays."  The world into which Keats is drawn by the nightingale's song is a world where "there is no light, / Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown."  He finds himself in an "embalmèd darkness" where he cannot see but must guess at the "sweets" that surround him in the grass and thicket - white hawthorn, fading violets, and the coming musk rose. 

This is a world of thick, floribund and sanative Imagination, a world where "it seems rich to die," while rapt in the song of ecstasy.  The song itself is ageless and was heard anciently by emperor and clown, and perhaps even "found a path / through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for her home, / She stood in tears amid the alien corn."  The song is the ultimate panacea, soothing the heart to peace and granting capacity to cope with every ill.  

And yet, while the song is eternal, the effect is only temporary.  The illusion cannot pull the soul away from ordinary life entirely, "cannot cheat so well / as she is famed to do."  Keats is not certain whether he has experienced a vision or a waking dream.  As the song fades and is buried deep in the glade of another valley, he is not certain whether he wakes or sleeps.  The question he poses:  when are any of us truly alive?  Keats wants to believe that he is alive when wrapped in the mantle of poetry, but ironically he acknowledges that it is a word of his own poem, which, "like a bell," tolls him back to his weary solitude. 

The temporary illusion created by the bird's song leaves in its place another, more enduring illusion, the final illusion of the poem.  Keats's own voice has itself become the voice of the nightingale.  He has transfigured the bird's song and made it his own - the song of the poet also heard in ancient days by emperor and clown.  Keats died young of tuberculosis, at the age of 25, in a bleak apartment at the Piazza di Spagna in Rome.  And while his body rests in a tomb in the Eternal City, and his spirit rests in some valley glade well beyond this world, we still hear his voice, like the voice of a nightingale in a darkness where the only light to be seen blows in on a breeze from heaven.  His own song calls to us time and again, as though it would also cheat death and make him as immortal as the bird.  He enchants us every time we read the poem into his hauntingly beautiful world of healing imagination and convinces us again that we may find there another one of the ways of flying and of dreaming and of coping, if only we believe.

"Ode to a Nightingale"

By John Keats

                                    1

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

     My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

     One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot

     But being too happy in thy happiness -

            That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

                 In some melodious plot

     Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

            Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

                                    2

O, for a draught of vintage!  that hath been

     Cooled for a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

     Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburned mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

     Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

            With beaded bubbles winking at the brim

                 And purple-stainèd mouth

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

     And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

                                    3

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

     What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

     Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

     Where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies;

            Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

                 And leaden-eyed despairs,

     Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

            Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.

                                    4

Away!  away!  for I will fly to thee,

     Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

     Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee!  tender is the night,

     And haply the Queen Moon is on her throne

            Clustered around by all her starry Fays;

                 But here there is no light,

     Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

            Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

                                    5

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

     Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet

     Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

     White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

            Fast fading violets covered up in leaves;

                 And mid-May's eldest child,

     The coming musk rose, full of dewy wine,

            The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

                                    6

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

     I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

     To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

     To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

            While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

                 In such an ecstasy!

     Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -

            To thy high requiem become a sod.

                                    7

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!

     No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

     In ancient days by emperor and clown;

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

     Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for her home,

            She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

                 The same that oft-times hath

     Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam

            Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.

                                    8

Forlorn!  the very word is like a bell

     To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu!  the fancy cannot cheat so well

     As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu!  adieu!  thy plaintive anthem fades

     Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

            Up the hillside; and now ‘tis buried deep

                 In the next valley glades;

     Was it a vision, or a waking dream?