My poem was inspired by watching a dog sleeping, with their eyelids twitching. What began as a curiosity about animals and dreaming soon gave way to a meditation on the human condition. This piece is especially dear to me since it is the first of my poems to be widely used in a college textbook in the USA and beyond, namely, the best-selling anthology: *Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing* (Pearson, 10th Edition) It is my hope to create, over time, a small virtual reading room on @dsound, where you can pass by—relax, reflect and refresh—as you listen to some poetry... *** ***What Do Animals Dream?*** *** Do they dream of past lives and unlived dreams unspeakably human or unimaginably bestial? Do they struggle to catch in their slumber what is too slippery for the fingers of day? Are there subtle nocturnal intimations to illuminate their undreaming hours? Are they haunted by specters of regret do they visit their dead in drowsy gratitude? Or are they revisited by their crimes transcribed in tantalizing hieroglyphs? Do they retrace the outline of their wounds or dream of transformation, instead? Do they tug at obstinate knots inassimilable longings and thwarted strivings? Are there agitations, upheavals or mutinies against their perceived selves or fate? Are they free of strengths and weaknesses peculiar to horse, deer, bird, goat, snake, lamb or lion? Are they ever neither animal nor human but creature and Being? Do they have holy moments of understanding deep in the seat of their entity? Do they experience their existence more fully relieved of the burden of wakefulness? Do they suspect, with poets, that all we see or seem is but a dream within a dream? Or is it merely a small dying a little taste of nothingness that gathers in their mouths? *** © Yahia Lababidi, author of [*Balancing Acts*](https://www.press53.com/poetry-collections/balancing-acts-new-selected-poems-1993-2015-by-yahia-lababidi) (Image by Davide Ragusa, Unsplash)

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