Dreams

I close my eyes,
A quest to fall asleep.
To travel to that darkened place where rest will finally greet.

I close my eyes,
and I see owls, white ghosts against the black backdrop of night.
I feel my chest, rise and fall, rise and fall.

I see ocean waves beating against resilent shores, an intricate dance of give and take.

I hear you calling my name, from the porch.
I see you standing and I feel the sun as I run run run to climb into your arms.

I remember swinging, an old willow tree, the giant quiet witness to all of my childhood memories.
I drove by a few years ago and she was gone.

It was all gone, but somewhere beneath the new paint, beneath the new barn, new fence, new car, I could see it in the framework, but it wasn't what it once was.

And everything changes, everything goes, everyone goes.
A moment of existence, once lived- it passes away forever.

But I remember it somewhere, inside my little head,
and at night it greets me,
calls to me, beckons me home, back to that ruined place as if I could somehow now fix it.

I never believed I could.

I slip from the hold of silent soft owls, their feathers white as snow,
away from that home I used to know

and into a river its currents carrying me away.
Pages and pages of paper, sprawled over with written words, ride along with me.
I struggle to hold on to the steep canyon ridges, but the water is determined to pull me along.

Then suddenly a switch, I'm dry and up high,
high on a cliff, its night and stars glitter above, able to show their true light against the absolute darkness

I walk up to the ledge.  Teeter at the edge.
Owls fly near and close, I can see my old home below.
I let go.

But instead of falling, I go up up up, and into full flight, one with the night.