In Dreams Christopher D. Eldridge © 2002 Do you remember when you used to dream? Do you remember playgrounds in clouds, fields of lollipops, the warmth of a familiar voice calling you home? Do you remember dreaming with your eyes wide open? Do you remember dreaming with the touch of grass upon your back? It was in those days when dreaming was a part of life, when dreams were the progress of man, when children’s play was children’s work. We were once chimerical creatures, for anything and everything was possible. The world was once just, for we were governed by fate, by destiny. But alas our youth faded. Our dreams receded into the darkness of our sleep, and a world full of unicorns, fairies, and elves perished. There was no room for such fancies. There was no time to dally with the make-believe. But there are some things never age and never die, some dreams that never go away. We were children when we met, faceless youth without names, dreamers in another’s dream. Dreams are the fancies of youth, where the future is the expanse of a cloudless sky. Do you remember that day, that day in a dream? It was a time before time, a time when dreams did not end simply because the mind and body woke. It was a day of love, though a day before it was ever understood. That was the day before we ever doubted its existence, a time when we knew it only as a nameless bliss. I knew love before I knew myself, before I knew anything but my own primal urges. But so do all of us who go on to dream as love is an early prerequisite for life. And yet we may come to forget it, abandon it, just as we abandon our dreams with our youth. Perhaps I too would have forgotten love if it were not for my dreams. I did not yet know your name or your face, but you were the warmth in my arms, the sweet smell of nature, of life. You were the nymph who danced in the trees, the fairy that fluttered through the clouds. You were the soft voice in the air, the beauty in every flower, the mystery in every force of nature. You were what I longed for, what I desired, what I needed to be free. You had no face, no figure, no name, for you were only a dream. Some dreams never die, they only wait in our hearts to be realized. In dreams we met; we were only children, dreamers in each other’s dreams. Like a child, my dreams do not end when I awake, instead they await me. There are some dreams that are real, some that you can hold, that you can cherish, that no one can take away. Every night it is you that I dream of; your beautiful face, your heavenly figure, your name which I have uttered ten thousand times. Some say that dreams don’t come true, but they do for us, every morning upon waking. Dreams are the fancies of youth, lost on those who cease to dream. To my dreams, my dreamer, my love, you are the woman of my dreams . . . |