Tonight, you'd think the wind could knock me over.
I am arthritic, creaking at the joints.
I try to stand tall and stoic, but I groan.
Involuntary, that.
I am neither gnarled nor crumbled.
Yet.
One day I will be.

In the velvet dark that holds all dreams,
A thousand hopes are given flighted chance.
Optimistic wishes waft through empty beams.

A gentle ashen pallor moonlight reams;
A billion shadowed niches seem to dance
Within the velvet dark that holds all dreams.

A bluish glow though leafy vellum seams
Can thread its way through thick and wooden lance.
Optimistic wishes waft through empty beams.

And oh! the silken light above that streams,
Dissolving all the hundred million "can't"s
Within the velvet dark that holds all dreams.

The night that's holding precious breath, it teems
With broken vows, inconsequential rants;
Optimistic wishes waft through empty beams.

The wish for what is come to be, it seems,
Envelopes friendships, hopeful romance.
Within the velvet dark that holds all dreams,
Optimistic wishes waft through empty beams.

A flock whistling outside my window,
circling each other,
dodging, dipping down
to the earth again.

An eddy of leaves,
kicked up by the wind.

I want to bring you high upon a mountaintop
to rest in the clouds themselves
and look out over the valley,
a sweep of Creation for us alone.
By night we will nest in the warmth of knowing
and belonging.

But here you remain.

Do you not wish to awaken to God's verdancy?
Breathe the very breath of the earth?

Tell me. I do not understand.