Dust of Dreams

The dead have found me in my dreams

Fishing beside lakes and in strange houses

That could be homes for lost families

In all the pleasures of completeness

And I wander through their natural company

In the soft comforts of contentment.

The dead greet me with knowing ease

And regard nothing the forsaken awakening

That abandons me in this new solitude

Of eyes flickering open and curtains drawing.

When the dead find me in my dreams

I see them living in the hidden places

Unanchored in time and ageless as wishes.

The woman lying at my side hears my sigh

Following the morning chime and asks

After me as I lie in the wake of sorrow’s concert,

But I will not speak of life’s loneliness

Or the empty shorelines where fishermen belong

And the houses never lived in never again

That stand in necessary configurations

To build us familiar places for the dead.

One day I will journey into her dreams

But I say nothing of this behind my smile

And she will see me hunting the dark waters

For the flit of trout and we will travel

Strange landscapes in the forever instant

Until she leaves me for the living day

But as the dead well know the art of fishing

Finds its reward in brilliant joyous hope

And eternal loving patience, and it is my

Thought now that such gods that exist

Are the makers of dreams and this is their gift

This blessed river of sleep and dreams

Where in wonder we may greet our dead

And sages and priests are wise when they say

Death is but sleep and we are forever alive

In the dreams of the living, for I have seen

My dead on nightly journeys and I tell you this:

They are well.

Song of dreaming fisher