The Need to Balance Against Knowing

It’s not the individual
Dream you should be worried about.
There’s no meaning to interpret.

It’s the meaning of the dreaming,
What the dreaming means for waking,
If anything, should puzzle you.

The necessity of dreaming
Can be explained various ways,
Distilled to—the body needs it.

The creature, the brain, needs to dream
To stay alive, to keep healthy.
It must pause there. It’s a balance,

A form of self-regulation,
One of the many ways the cells
Autocorrect and right themselves.

It’s nothing unique to humans,
Although humans dream intensely,
An adaptation to meaning—

Light bones for flights, huge lungs for depths.
But that would suggest that dreaming
Ballasts as counter-consciousness,

An antidote to the meanings
You make while you’re awake, cleansing
The body of toxins built up

From being extremely aware.
Lean too far into awareness
And not even dreaming’s enough

To keep you alive, to keep you
Creaturely in the face of facts.
Dreaming’s the sign the system’s stressed.