This poem is a celestial love letter written from the landscape of sleep. The speaker moves through a cascade of dream imagery—sailing clouds, starlight swims, hidden doors, midnight trains—each metaphor layered upon the next to evoke the liminal, half-lit quality of the unconscious mind. Dreams are described as carnivals, cinemas, shadow chess games, and treasure maps, but always they lead to the same destination: the beloved. She appears as “a ghost wrapped in gossamer silk,” “an echo arriving before the clap,” “a lighthouse in my fog.” The poem’s central ache is exquisite: the speaker never wants to awaken because dreams are where she most vividly exists. The imagery builds toward cosmic reverence—the muse as moon’s lullaby, goddess glimpsed in fog, comet’s graceful dance—before concluding with a wordplay on “(a)Muse” that ties the poem back to its creative source. This is Plahm at his most romantically expansive, celebrating how love infiltrates even our unconscious hours.

“Dreaming” is one of David Plahm’s most lush and accomplished pieces—a sustained rhapsody that earns its length through relentless image-making and genuine emotional escalation. The poem’s strength lies in its refusal to settle on any single metaphor for dreams; instead, it offers a kaleidoscope of comparisons (carnival, cinema, shadow chess, treasure map, secret garden) that collectively capture the shifting, elusive nature of the sleeping mind. The beloved is rendered through equally varied imagery: gossamer ghost, lighthouse, nocturnal flower, moon’s lullaby, comet’s dance. This multiplicity could feel scattered in lesser hands, but Plahm maintains coherence through consistent tone and the clear gravitational pull toward his muse. The “(a)Muse” wordplay at the close is both playful and earned, grounding the ethereal content in the poet’s craft. A few transitional moments could be tightened, but overall this is a deeply romantic, technically accomplished work that rewards rereading. One of the strongest pieces in the collection.