In The Realm Of Morpheus

At night, when I lay down to sleep

and dream, dreaming, I am in Shangri-la.

A castle. Enchanted forest. Endless sea.

Or maybe, my self, flying through ether,

jetting around like nothing.

I plumb silent seas, course out

to the Venice of my dreams, an island.

Wondrous, the realm I am in then.

Or perhaps, in dreams, I am just the poetic artist.

I capture life with my every stroke,

the pen of my mind capturing life

in all its ever-wondering complexity.

Writing a verse. A story. An epic

that curls and curvets through mythic dreams,

reaching far, far from sea to sea,

of such moving power as to move

the very ground of Morpheus on which I stand.

Or, maybe I am just in fact the epic,

my story the great history of all the world –

ranging far through and on and past mountains

with peaks like birds’ beaks, reaching high,

perhaps on foot, or maybe I fly again:

the best epic dreams are those I spend

with some other, sharing the glorying feeling

of having scaled my own Everest.

And wake up the next morning knowing it.

In dreams, I am a castle-stalker.

A tightrope-walker. I seize this life

and what it offers, with never a thought

that that is not of what my waking life really consists.

Waking in the morning, I open my eyes –

the hardest thing, sometimes, to ever do –

and see tendrils of sunlight fighting their way

into a once-dark room. Vestiges remain.

But, the story I write in dreams, is just

too little beyond what my mind can recall.

I do not surrender, neither to the skepticism

of conscious thought, nor to the sensuousness of sleep

but live in between, in a world of waking wonder.