I woke up this morning with two lines in my head, repeating over and over as if to remember them:
Five times I dreamed again of spotted knees
A leopard leg is keeping me adrift
Noooo idea what that’s all about; but it seemed important.
Anyone?
Wow! Those are complex lines! I often wake up with very short, simple lines of speech running (over and over and over!) through my mind, but yours are remarkable. I don’t think, even wide awake, I could remember those, even if you recited them for me ten times running!
My opinion is that your mind was having fun with the sounds of the words, but that there isn’t any actual meaning to them. It’s somewhat akin to “'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves…” The linguistic centers of your brain were active, but didn’t have anything concrete to work with, and so slipped into “free association” mode.
It’s lovely word soup…but it is just word soup.
But, as my old psychiatrist would have said, “Well, what does it seem to mean to you?”
It means nothing, no dreams do.
Sounds like you’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately…or should start writing some. 
I’d call it word soup as well, but write it down! That’s a fun little couplet ya got there.
Oh, some do.
I’ve been dreaming a lot (a LOT!) about my old workplace. Being unemployed for quite some time now, the meaning is (obnoxiously) obvious. Dreams about dead family members are also obviously meaningful.
Dreams about Star Trek characters running around in mazes…not so much.
Sure they do. Usually something along the lines of “X,Y, and Z played a part in this dream because I’ve experienced X,Y, and Z in the previous 24 hours,” or "I felt generic feeling in this dream, probably because I feel generic feeling in real life.
But the OP’s example? I think it means your brain was randomly firing while you were asleep and you ended up with a few incomplete random thoughts strung together.
Leopard legs have spotted knees, makes sense to me. If it was keeping you adrift, perhaps it was a leopard-leg-like life preserver.
Let me clarify a bit. I put dreams in the same catagory as things like horoscopes. If you believe they mean something then they do, if you don’t believe that they mean something, they don’t. No scientific way to prove or disprove that they have meaning so it is up to the person’s own belief.
I usually wake up with a tent post.
Of course, that is because I dream of humping the wife when I wake up
WOOO HOOOOO
Occasionally I will awake from a dream with a phrase, idea, or insight that at the time seems absolutely profound. Meaning of life kind of stuff. But then somehow I forget it or never get to jot it down.
I have a feeling if I ever do happen to remember it or write it down it will be as profound as what you have there.
Sometimes a leopard leg keeping you adrift is just a leopard leg keeping you adrift.
All by itself I’d say it may be something you may understand later in life. Do you have any more to go on? Not really getting anything.
A WAG:
From those lines another phrase will emerge that has a different and understandable meaning 
Who is the person you know with freckled knees?
A great-uncle dreamed poetry, but never could remember it afterward.
Once, he took the effort of getting up and writing it down immediately.
“She was the white on the barber pole.
I was the red, God bless my soul.”
He never again bothered to write down his dream-poetry.