Dreaming My Grandfather’s Dreams

My mind churns, spills
with wonder: my grandfather
slept in this farmhouse
as a child and here, this night,
grandfather many times over,
I lie in the very same house,
the first home of my ancestor,
the grandfather I never knew,
who died before I could know
a father could have a father.

In this mountain darkness
I lie and hear the silence
of the house, its first room
squared and hammered upright
two and a half centuries past,
these beams hand-hewn,
dragged from the steep slopes
that eavesdrop on us all,
this house expanded by
generations of Sorestads
coming down the centuries
like logs from the mountainside.

Here in the house
of my father’s father,
where the same mountain stillness
tucked round my grandfather
like a quilt, I drift off to sleep,
dream the dreams of my ancestors --
the cold dreams of stone fences,
the warm dreams of evening lamps
and family table clamour;
the gentle dreams of cows,
neckbells clinking them
home for milking time.

silent dreams of silvery salmon
finning up the Suldal River
from the sea to the spawn,
(I imagine I hear the water
move through the darkness).

In the house of his childhood
I dream my grandfather’s dreams
and I am a child as well.
An ocean removed from home
in a country I have never seen,
wrapped in the comforter
of my own history, I dream
my grandfather’s dreams.

Sorestad, Suldal Valley, Norway 1998