I am not the one you dream of each night,
coming in on the wind through the open window,
brushing the hair from your face and kissing your forehead,
soothing you, whispering it’s going to be okay now,
there’s no more worry and fear left in the world for you.
Don’t sing songs of rain when the monsoons arrive,
don’t stand by the banks knowing the river’s about to burst,
the river that flows somewhere else your eyes don’t see,
maybe an ocean like the blues of your eyes,
maybe a dark sky that paints violet on the dawn.
I hope for you it’s a Nile that laps at your feet,
so you can sail away on the shining firmament of a new day,
but if you happen to be washing your feet in an Okavango,
know that I will walk with you across the swamp and sand.
I saw your parable play out on mountaintops like beacons,
glowing in the aftermath of another avoidable forest fire,
and all the animals stayed as the flames kicked up at their tails,
and I couldn’t figure out quite why they didn’t run.
When I saw their eyes, there was acceptance when I expected fear,
as if they knew running was futile, as if they knew they were already dead.
Is that why I stayed there in the trees as they burned to ash?
I walked through the burnt wreckage and white sticks blew away to dust,
and I swear in one brief fleeting moment, your face appeared in the air,
thin and wistful, whispering wishfully of a dream that never bore fruit.
You need to go on a limb to pick the best ones but none could support you,
and down to fell, to the grey ashen ground, and made angels like you do in snow,
but when you stood up, instead of an angel, an outline of your mirage in chalk.
Don’t cry from those eyes that glisten like the waters of two tiny planet Earths;
don’t speak the words that took centuries to form if they don’t mean what you intend;
instead, listen to the nightingale whistling her song as the sun rests her head for the night;
dream of the harbour that offers you sanctuary when the gales come low and loud.
There is a new dawn forming in the swirls of the blacks that hang above your head,
in the starlight songs, in the planetary movements, in the cosmic danse macabre.
You will find me lying supine looking back at you from the Pillars of Creation,
with the burning white light of a million new stars that will die to give birth to new life,
and as their explosive echoes penetrate the dark of a soundless universe,
I will ride the waves that rise and fall invisible, plotting a course to your heart.
Leave a little space in your soul, that burns with crimson, with gold, with pink,
and follow the sounds the little raindrops make on the needles of the pine trees;
hear how the water splits, the light’s refracted, reflected, and deflected,
see a billion minuscule rainbows blossom in the rage of a storm.
Find me in the glowing rays of a beautiful sunrise, not in the dark folds of the sunset.