Pip: Colleen Keller Breuning lands home at 1:30 in the morning after a travel saga involving Atlanta, a jammed baggage carousel, and pouring rain — and still sits down to write a poem.
Mara: That poem is what we’re here for today. The post weaves together a return from Florida, four grandkids, a Neruda-inspired double etheree, and a conscience that moonlights as a dream weaver. Let’s start with the poem itself and everything that surrounds it.
Weaver of Dreams
Pip: The interesting tension in this post is between exhaustion and creative output — the whole backstory is about delays, chaos, and a 3:30 a.m. bedtime, and yet the poem that emerges is genuinely luminous and calm.
Mara: The poem draws directly on Pablo Neruda, and the lines land with real weight. Here is the spine of it: “tonight I can write the saddest lines / as I climb the psychedelic rainbow / floating in warm hues of purple and gold / the night wind whirls in the sky and sings / its words touch my soul and calm me.”
Pip: So the upshot is that the poem performs exactly what the post describes — the night wind stills the raging sea within, and the writing itself is the act of settling after a turbulent day.
Mara: The form is a double etheree, a syllable-count structure, which means this wasn’t just a free-form release — there was craft and constraint operating even at 3:30 in the morning. The post names Neruda as the direct inspiration, and you can feel the passion and color she attributes to him working through the imagery: indigo skies, crimson sun, amber moon.
Pip: She writes that she wishes she had more time to immerse herself in his work, and honestly, producing a Neruda-inflected double etheree after a runway delay and a midnight baggage claim is a pretty committed form of immersion.
Mara: The post closes the conscience as the “weaver of dreams” — the final image of the poem — and then opens into something warmer. The Florida trip itself was full: a six-month-old named Holland giggling, Posie’s kindergarten graduation with a Best Behavior award, lunch at Tom’s Hot Dogs, and a toddler named Anthony who has learned all his shapes and colors and no longer even naps.
Pip: The poem and the trip report are doing the same emotional work — processing love and loss in the same breath, the joy of being present with the grandkids and the sadness of leaving.
Mara: She puts it plainly: “This trip filled up our hearts.” The poem is what happens when that fullness meets a quiet house at midnight.
Pip: Exhaustion, Neruda, and four grandkids — not a bad raw material list for a poem.
Mara: The night as haven, the conscience as weaver. There’s more of that territory worth returning to next time.
Weaver of Dreams
Night
danced past
crimson sun
amber moon smiled
I wheeled with the stars
in the indigo skies
my heart broke loose on the wind
carried forth my tears and sorrow
tonight I can write the saddest lines
as I climb the psychedelic rainbow
floating in warm hues of purple and gold
the night wind whirls in the sky and sings
its words touch my soul and calm me
stills the raging sea within
my fertile mind can rest
night is my haven
but my conscience
is weaver
of my
dreams
Colleen Keller Breuning © 2026
May 23, 2026
Colleen Keller Breuning 