Dreamscape
For Sarah, who showed us all the way.
She dreams, sometimes, in the late hours of night
When stillness wraps the house in a muffling cloak
Husband, children, lost to their own dreams
As she stands on the balcony with her face to the moon
Straining to catch a glimpse of the silhouetted owl
Wind stirs hair threaded silver with years
Hope and sorrow spill from clouded eyes
Set in networks of finely etched lines
The spiders of time have left their mark
And yet
In her dreams she is still the young girl she was
Beautiful then, coming into womanhood
But not ready to set aside the trappings of childhood
From thence it came, the twists and turns,
A journey mapped out in her own mind
From child to adult,
That subtle progression,
Merely a metaphor
So she watches the moon and waits for the owl
Hoping to reclaim a childhood lost to her
An age of innocence long past
When wonder and hope were still faithful companions
Before the dreary motions of everyday stole them
Wrapped her in this hard defensive shell
She carries the treasures of the experience locked in her heart
Beneath the shell, and the layers of carefully-wrought kindness,
Civility, geniality, that everyone else sees,
Her hidden self, that woman-child in the ballroom
In her gown, feeling grown-up for the first time,
But free to plunge back into the security of childhood at any moment
And he is still there sometimes, dancing with what she was,
Forcing her to move onward
Grow from child to woman
As she had to but would not
And for that gift of motion, she hates him -- loves him --
And yet she wishes sometimes she could go back to then
And be that dancing girl again
Hovering on the verge
And as her heart takes flight on the wings of an owl
It falls, falls, falls again
Back to earth
Too burdened by the cares of time
To soar as it did then
And she weeps, bitter tears of loss ...
Knowing the steps can never be reversed,
That she can never turn and walk back down the path
And despite this all, in her heart she yet hopes
That when it is all over and the world falls down
And the time comes to slough off mortality
He will be there, on owl's wings
And they will forever be dancing
Falling in love for the very first time
In a ballroom remembered as if a waking dream