The Foibles of a Dream

The Foibles of a Dream[1]

 

-A Most Heartbreaking Dream-

 

Why suffer the uncertainties of night

To burn but like a candle in the gloom,

 

When our best hope in life is to remove

From loving in the squalor of a tomb?

 

Why conjure all the foibles of a dream

But for the sake of what must surely fail?

 

For love cannot enfold us in her wings,

And only hopeless longing can prevail!

 

How is it that I know not of your death?

But learn of it, at once, as my soul slips

 

Into a realm where it is carved in stone

 And subject to my trembling fingertips!

 

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Only now, do I recall the rapture of a butterfly,

Innocent and not knowing what I thought of her -

A beautiful act of God, different from all others,

 

Beheld only once and briefly -

And still loved a lifetime later.

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[1] This poem recounts an extraordinary dream the poet had in the summer of 2014. His mother had been dead for nearly a year, but only as he awoke, did he recall that she was no longer a part of the physical world.