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You're talking in your sleep. I hear your dreams.
I'm jealous of caresses of the moon
and stars that spill their gentle magic on what seems
an almost perfect night. I know, too soon
this spell will suffer pause with breaking day.
Reality will burden us with touch.
I'll write about strange images in gray
as I remember, but they've changed so much!
Our greatest plans were possible in youth,
we felt invincible as supermen.
But now we're older and we know the truth,
we fall, we get back up, we try again.
You're stirring with the morning song of birds
as I complete my sonnet with your words.
My eyes delight in simple lines and bolds.
I love the straight and angled slants of trees,
the sharpest mountains ridging at the folds
of heaven, parallels in sands and seas.
My ears need cricket song to cheer the night,
an old cat's slow, low purring in the sun,
a lullably of waterfall and light,
the laughter of a youngster having fun.
My nose finds pleasure in a baby's hair,
in sweet perfume of lilac bloom in spring,
in baking bread for bitter winter care,
in apple pie and chocolate anything.
A cool, caressing breeze I love so much,
but most of all my senses crave your touch.
I notice that her skin looks very thin,
translucent over veins of purple-blue,
like finest china, fragile as the cup
that holds her herbal tea. She sips the gold
of every autumn leaf and summer sky,
and smiles at something young and far away.
Her eyes are looking through me and away,
as if my form is glass or something thin,
or maybe I am distant as the sky,
as out of reach as clouds that ride the blue.
Another sip of warmly fragrant gold,
slow steam leaks lazy lines above her cup.
I bend and kiss the wrinkled face I cup
in both my hands. She used to kiss away
my pain when I was young, with hair like gold
that fell and curled around my shoulder's thin.
I kiss the lids that shade those eyes' strong blue
because I'll never kiss the blue of sky.
Her eyes explain the color of the sky.
She offers me her nearly empty cup,
says, "Read the tea leaves, child. Dispel this blue.
A happy time is just a wish away.
We'll wish us wealthy and we'll wish us thin.
We'll wish a magic river running gold.
"And if you dip your hand in river gold,
then lift it out to dry toward sun and sky,
it all drips back except one golden thin,
a ring around your wrist, just like this cup,
this china ringed with gold. A wish away
from ever young, a wish as pure as blue."
Oh Mother, if my eyes were half as blue,
if I could wish a river half as gold,
I'd wish you far from old, and far away
where expectations climb to reach the sky.
Bright happy days would overflow your cup,
your problems fade to half as thick as thin,
then thin again to paler shades of blue.
You'd dip your cup in running river gold
and toast the sky, just half a wish away.
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