Flower burgers

The Flowerburgers
      Part 4

Baudelaire opened
up a hamburger stand
in San Francisco,
but he put flowers
between the buns.
People would come in
and say, "Give me a
hamburger with plenty
of onions on it."
Baudelaire would give
them a flower burger
instead and the people
would say, "What kind
of a hamburger stand
is this?"

by Richard Brautigan

     I came across this poem by Richard Brautigan and it reminded me of a dream I had in the late fall of 2009.  I was up late the night before.  I had a dream that I was in a galleria food court.  It was indoors, and I was standing in a line and looking at the menu on the wall behind the counter.  It was my turn to order, and I was trying to make out the numbers, but they kept changing.  They were charging 5.00 for a hamburger, then it would change to 50.00.  I ordered a burger, then I went  outside to sit in a courtyard to wait for my order.

     As I sat at a small table under a veranda of trees and vines, an unusual waiter came to my table.  He was dressed in vintage clothes, but they looked like new.  He was very kind and soft spoken.  He placed my plate in front of me, and instead of hamburger meat, there was a big bunch of herbs inside the bread.  I didn't understand, I had never seen bundles of herbs instead of lettuce in a burger.  He then handed me a large bunch of herbs that were bundled together, very fresh and green and then smiled.  The sun was bright and I didn't see his face clearly but I could feel his smile.  He filled my glass with water fused with citrus fruit, and the sun shined through the leaves overhead and made the light and water very beautiful.

     When I looked up from my glass the man who was waiting on me was gone, but I realized when I tried to look around and my eyes were still closed that I was waking up to golden light in my room.  I had slept late, and the room was full of sunlight.  When I woke up, I realized that I forgot to bring my potted herbs inside overnight and the nights had started to get too cold already.  I tried to bring them in, but they had frozen overnight.  I was sad that I ignored my thought to bring them in the day before, thinking I could have saved them.

     I thought maybe that was what the dream was about, my way of reminding myself to bring in my plants.  But as I started completing an assignment on John Keats I was working on, I learned that he once studied to be an apothacary.  I looked up pictures of him after that, and although I didn't see the man's face clearly in my dream, I felt like it must have been about him.  I didn't know at the time that I was sick, and if I would have understood then to take the dream as an indication to seek help earlier, I could have avoided a more serious condition with my health.

     I also felt later on that it was an indication that my healing needed to include the most natural process available.  I am grateful that it has been possible to do that so far, and that I am still doing so well, and to have an apothecary and poet for a guide.

Ben Whishaw as John Keats in "Bright Star"
 Ode to a Nightingale
(...)
 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 home,
    She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
          The same that oft-times hath
  Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
    Of perilous seas, in faery 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 fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
  Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
    Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
          In the next valley-glades:
  Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
    Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?