Dream

I have walked all over the country miles -

Saw the falcons pirouette in hot summer sky;

Lunched upon sour green apples and fermented mangoes

And napped under the hot incandescent clock;

Quenched my thirst with melodic silver spring water

And skipped stones across frozen lakes.

 

I’ve immortalized poets against the echoing granite walls of time.

In bare feet I danced in verdant green meadows

That carpet a bottomless valley;

Traced my fingertips along the gnarled grooves

Of a dying oak and bid it farewell.

 

I have bathed in babbling brooks that giggled at

My nakedness and dried myself in the wispy autumn winds.

Upon mountaintops, I have squeezed sunsets between

My forefinger and thumb and slowly opened them again to

The shimmering glow of a new moon.

 

I have slept beneath a canopy of universes and composed

My dreams against shimmering stars;

Built wet sandcastles fit for kings on foreign shores

And fed them to the ravenous surf.

 

Beneath cascading waterfalls were written tumbling

Verse, while angelfish nibbled at my dropped metaphors.

In the Mascarene Islands, I flew kites built from

Forest reeds and raffia palms until they were swallowed

By drifting winter clouds.

 

The return to a new day awaits me, and a thousand more

Miles beneath my feet before this life is drawn full circle.

Awakening a memory, I close my eyes

And the colors of life’s possibilities explode beneath my lids.