"Time flowing in the night"
                           Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Have I dreamt my life, or was it a true one?"
                           Walter Von der Vogelweide


Look for the sleepers on
Their backs, eyes closed,
Their palms upturned to sacrifice
Their dreaming bodies to the night.

Not knowing that even as the
Sun rises wearing a halo of liquid gold,
And as their long dark lashes lazily open,
They are not waking from their dreams.
Outside the hummingbird whirring in
Dizzying aeronautics, and the barn owl
Shutting its fierce yellow eyes

Are dreams too;
All dreams.

The morning routine:
The taste of honey and oats
On the tongue, the orange-yellow
Melon scooped and swallowed hard,
Waking the senses; the bitter coffee,
The slightly burned toast

Dreams,
All dreams.

It was a book delivered to him
By a misty-eyed stranger in rags
Who spoke but a few words barely
Audible and, with a toothless grin,
Hobbled away, though his gait was
Somehow a noble one.
This had happened a few nights ago,
Only the book remained unopened,
He was too tired at the end of the
Day and there was work to do in
The fields and that stubborn tractor
Breaking down each midday.

It was last evening that his curiosity
Got to him and he kicked off his
Work boots and sat with it in the
Reclining chair; he put on his spectacles
And began to read.
He was not a reader much; his time
Reading was mostly spent on the
Good Book, which he found somewhat
Difficult to stay focused on.
But this book was different: he was
Engaged after the first sentence.
There was a stirring in his chest
And he intuited from the incredible
Words that there was something here
That was true.
He read until the moon was high
In the night sky and he turned the
Last page at sometime after midnight,
Falling into an easy sleep in which
He dreamed that he was a Persian
Prince and each night he was told
A story by a beautiful girl. He KNEW
that he was dreaming and he knew
There was such a thing as magic, even
In his mundane world.

Now the sun in a heat haze.
The old chipped weathervane on the
Tin roof of the barn, casting a long
Shadow on the rows of wheat,
Waiting to be harvested.
As he climbed onto the rusty
Tractor he felt a sense of wonder
Present in all these things.
As the old tractor belched and
Caught fire, he had the thought
That if he was still dreaming,
As the book had said, he felt more
Awake than he had ever been in
His life.