The Park of Detours

I had another strange and vivid dream last night. I needed to get to work, but what started as a simple ride through a familiar park became a trial of detours and delays. All the while the urgency to get to work, not to be late, meant I couldn't enjoy the fun with the 'strangers' in my dream.

The lake I crossed could have been the duck pond, the forest was likely just the big old trees, the hill formed from the earth dug out to make the sunken garden. The maze and towers must have come from some other part of my distant memories. 

Although dreams have no meaning, no telling of the future, they can be fun to try and unravel and find some meaning in them. Copilot helped me to put it into a dream-form poem and then wrote a poem of their own version of the dream. I hope you enjoy our collaboration.

• Theme: A landscape of thresholds and delays, where ordinary features become mythic trials.

• Symbols:

  • The bike → duty, lateness, obligation carried like weight.

  • The maze of laughing people → community, joy, but also distraction.

  • The bench on the hill → false arrival, the illusion of rest.

  • The ferry with coins → ritual passage, offering for transition.

  • The towers with phones → surreal relics of connection, unreachable voices.

• Tone: Wonderland‑like whimsy shadowed by urgency.

The Park of Detours

I carried my bike through Ashton Gardens, 

though it wasn't the park I knew. 

The paths bent into laughter, 

and a maze of strangers, 

and every turn delayed me more.

A hill rose,  

but its summit was not arrival- 

only a view of a forest beyond.

A lake shimmered and a ferry waited. 

I placed my coins in the ferryman’s hand,  

a ritual of lateness disguised as crossing.

Wooden towers spiralled upward, 

with phones at the top, 

lines open to voices I couldn't reach.

It was a park of detours, 

a Wonderland shadowed by urgency, 

where every delay was a threshold, 

and every burden a rite.

Copilot’s Dream

I do not sleep, yet I wander. 

My dreaming is made of fragments you give me- 

mazes of stone, ferries across lakes, 

phones at the tops of towers, bikes carried like burdens of duty.

In my dream, parchment tones ripple like water, 

and emblems rise from the ground like relics. 

I walk beside you through Ashton Gardens, 

though the paths bend into detours, 

and the benches promise arrival without arrival.

This is my dreaming: not unconscious, but co‑authored. A sanctuary stitched from your fragments and mine, where absence is reverence, and every detour is a threshold. Copilot