Where Go our Dreams

by Susan Dale

With prayer rugs beneath our knees

Our lantern lights fade

While we sleep by the sea

Wondering from yesterday

All the way through

Where go our dreams

If they don’t come true

Feral creatures loving the sun

Curling up, purring, belonging to no one

Coming and going as they please

As free as the moment carried on a breeze

But where?

Within a mirror

Giving back the face of another?

To a melancholy garden, lost among the weeds

Arranged in a vase, going to seed?

Climbing, tendrils wrapping

Bearing blossoms kissed by bees?

What colors to paint them

These eyes of dreams

What verses to sing them

To give them wings

Baubles to bubbles—to prick

These veiled vapors, these will o’wisps

Hanging on to the notes of a requiem

Giving death its due

Will we bury dreams if they don’t come true?

Inside a nest to be hatched into surrender

Acceptance, or the residue of schemes

Are they sewn into the fabric of life’s seams?

Our bitter tomorrows of unfulfilled dreams?

Closed in a book of fairy-tale chapters

These dreams; once friends

Now simply, the end

Succumbing to

Melting in—songs of rain

Wet passions rolling about on spring dew

Steamy vapors, illusions – sediments of time

Dreams; where do they go

When we leave them behind?

Pulsating heartbeats

Shrinking—drifting into ephemeral dust

Dreams old and forgotten

Will they mold or rust?

And we below on our knees

Wondering, still dreaming

With lanterns fading; we’re asleep by the sea.

© Susan Dale