I am in a park,
somewhere.
I see a bird,
a black swan
with green markings—
an elaborate, abstract pattern.
I turn away.
When I look back,
the bird is gone.
In its place—
a beautiful black woman.
I am drawn to her,
instantly,
without hesitation.
She approaches,
her eyes knowing.
"You act as if you
do not know me."
"Should I?"
"I have always been part of you.
The source of your comfort,
what you have sought
to find."
"Come with me,"
she says.
And I follow—
as light merges with light,
nothing lost,
nothing cast back in shadow.
Commentary:
This was a dream I had decades ago, partially during hypnosis. At the time, I wasn’t sure why it stayed with me, but now I realize it was revealing something I hadn’t fully questioned before.
As I was thinking about sharing this poem, I noticed a decorative black bird outside a house and thought, aren’t most swans white? That small moment led me to reflect on how deeply language and perception shape what we see as beautiful, valued, and familiar.
Western culture has long associated blackness with negativity, invisibility, or being "less than." The term “black sheep” carries an undeserved stigma. And yet, in my dream—without hesitation, without doubt—what I saw was warmth, beauty, and familiarity.
Why is that?
Why does society condition us to overlook what is naturally beautiful, what is already there?
And why—if culture has ingrained these biases so deeply—did I instinctively feel something so different at my core?
I’ve read about these biases in social psychology research, I’ve heard them in conversations, and I know how powerfully they shape perception. But if so much of society operates under this framework—why did my subconscious reject it so completely?
Psychologically, warmth is associated with comfort—skin against skin, touch, presence. White, in some contexts, represents coldness, sickness, or sterility (white as a sheet), while darker skin often feels physically warmer to the touch.
But do most people notice this?
Or does society teach us to ignore, to devalue, to assume something else?
This dream forced me to confront how instinct and cultural conditioning are often at odds. While I had been taught one narrative, my deepest self saw something different—something true.
Maybe this is an invitation for others to ask themselves:
What have I been taught to see? And what might I truly recognize—if I let myself?