I dreamt last night
that I sat on pavement, cracked,
a lonely old road deep in the heart
of green fields, marigolds.
I sat motionless, my palms engulfing
the warmth of the asphalt, chest slowly, penitently
heaving, shallow breath.
I know this dream, have had it before. Someone far away
I am missing, and only in dreams can I listen
to my heart’s signaled palpitations, a cipher easily broken.
I wake on a Sunday morning and the light floods my bedroom walls,
as white as blindness. I hesitate to open my eyes, if perchance my dreams would die
along with the darkness of my shuttered eyelids. I linger in bed, hear the birds chirping, the dogs being walked, the blinds jangling in the weak morning wind. I survey the scaffolds of the day and have nothing more to say.
All these roads I have traveled, all this understanding I have sought
when all I want is to speak with you again, if only in thought.
My name is Michael Sean Gallagher. I am a Lecturer in Digital Education at the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. I am Co-Founder and Director of Panoply Digital, a consultancy dedicated to ICT and mobile for development (M4D); we have worked with USAID, GSMA, UN Habitat, Cambridge University and more on education and development projects. I was a researcher on the Near Futures Teaching project, a project that explores how teaching at The University of Edinburgh unfold over the coming decades, as technology, social trends, patterns of mobility, new methods and new media continue to shift what it means to be at university. Previously, I was the Research Associate on the NERC, ESRC, and AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund sponsored GCRF Research for Emergency Aftershock Forecasting (REAR) project. I was an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (한국외국어대학교) in Seoul, Korea. I have also completed a doctorate at University College London (formerly the independent Institute of Education, University of London) on mobile learning in the humanities in Korea.
