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Lucid Dreaming

Empty is only the warp of our tapestry,
Only part of God's pattern, only the interval,
Only the silence that shapes His pale music
Remembered when drifting, when waking from dreams
In that sleep-soddened tent where our souls
Slake their thirst for the new, for the novel,
And the stone still rolls down the million-year cliff
From the beginning of dreams in the red heat of the plains,
In the quest for safe shelter, in the consuming of carrion....

Yet if dreams hold an answer, as flowers hold fog,
They must answer with song, and, if they answer,
Must dance among stars, and have their own hymns
Of the body and blood, and must sing them.

(The eye's iris closing in the brightening light...
	The body, vanishing in the whitening light...
	The mind --
		an old man running along a beach of blue sand
			with a young girl riding high on his shoulders --
				dissolves into a memory.
	The lips,
		pale and smiling, evaporate,
			and smoothed in hot sanding winds,
				dissolve into a line,
	And the eyes,
		gazing into the spaces between the stars,
			grow dim and close on the dark.
	Grow dim and sleep.
	Grow dim and sleep...
	Sleep through 
    that deepening darkness that spreads beyond death.)

A nimbus of night held cupped in the far stars
Where fresh sunlight falls like feathers through bones.
Where lost constellations have no shapes and no names,
But are parts of His pattern, forgotten mandalas,
While on Earth we return to the sun and the iris,
The iris and sun, gleaming deep in His sleep
That only rain on new leaves will lend us.

Stars fading.
	Sun rising.
		Windy city....
			Morning rises
              forever... forever... 
                 as love rises forever.
We are all 
Awake Now.
	Sunlight falls
		on all our faces
                here on this shore with no name,
				here these blue sands 
                here by the crimson sea.
Stars above dwindle
	above the blade of light,
		and whirling shake their hair,
			jet ebony, 
               in a free wind blowing
East and West,
	clear and warm,
		 now and forever,
			Hello, good-bye, I'll always love you.

We hold each other here, 
Here in the place of God's solitude, 
Here in His luminous night.
There are others with us. 
We have met them in another time.

Love,
	for the moon is rising.
Love,
	for the sun delays.


— 1969

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • JiminAlaska April 14, 2019, 8:21 AM

    I remember ’69. 2 years after our flood. Was doing a lot of lucid dreaming/rebuilding.

  • jd April 5, 2020, 10:23 AM

    Just beautiful. I thought you had just written it and were looking back
    but it doesn’t matter. It’s timeless. You are so blessed with your words,
    Gerard VanDerluen.

  • Anne April 5, 2020, 10:49 AM

    There it is–the reason for words.

  • James ONeil April 5, 2020, 2:16 PM

    & in 2020, today, out in the snow in the yard monitoring my granddaughter putting 50 rounds through her Little Badger .22 rifle. Quite lucid and dreaming and learning.

  • rabbit tobacco April 5, 2020, 2:31 PM

    Lord of the starfields/Bruce Cockburn
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP_CwMr7yvc

  • Vanderleun April 5, 2020, 6:27 PM

    Very fine song, Rabbit. I’ve promoted it to an item on the main page. Thanks.