The Poet's Dreams

Sometimes, I lie awake at night, head resting on the pillow, hands tucked under my cheek almost as if I'm praying, and I just watch.

I watch the stars, and the moon, and the brief, subtle flickers of an owl hunting in the sprawling forests outside my window. The shadows hug trees, grass, little puddles of snow that don't want to melt just yet and linger stubbornly in the dimples of the ground. Crickets chirp restlessly, and something rustles the bushes lining our walkway.

Through that little rectangle, that plain, calculated hole in my wall, I watch.

And sometimes, I have music in my head. Sweet, lilting pianos, compositions of classical new-age that makes me want to close my eyes, breathe, smile, and fade into a beautiful dream. Sometimes, Cristofori's Dream.

Those nights, I pull on my slippers, though I don't like pink and rabbits don't belong on feet, because they're warm and soft, and I shrug on a long coat and a hat, a little bit shabby, but functional, and knitted with love. And then, properly attired, I drag the window up, slide out onto the slanted, hopefully stable, roof, and shut it before the warmth escapes.

Past the soft golden light from the other side of my brother's curtains. Out, to the tree that helpfully stretches one limb out for me to hold. Down, through skeletal branches and an occasional leaf. Away, away to the silkily carpeted forest, lain with moss and long grasses, delightfully free of thorns and underbrush.

Deeper into the heart of the woods, I run.

The quietly rolling hills and curling creeks glisten in the light of the moon, full and plump, reflecting her pale glow over this side of the world. The air is crisp, biting, nipping a little too harshly at my exposed face and hands, so I pull the hat a little further down and shove my hands in my pockets.

Slowly, gracefully, flakes of snow begin to slip past the arching branches that form a laced canopy in the sky.

In my head, the music is playing, jumping, spinning through my mind like velvet, and I'm in a dream. My feet are bare, pressing against the cushy ground as I flit by. My hair, unbound and tossing itself down past my shoulders in untamed waves, glows its honeyed brown. And I'm not in pajamas or a coat, but a gown, white, phantom-like in the night as it swirls around me, and it's as if I'm not even human anymore.

I've become an elfin creature, wound snugly into the forest's soul as I dance through it, laughing and singing in harmonies, finding my own music, my own crescendo and serenade as I take ownership of the night.

My night.

Mine to hold and relish, drape over my heart like a layer of fantastic wishes and pull securely about my shoulders, as a shawl woven from dreams and shadows, glimmering stars decorating its drapes.

And if perhaps I'm not quite sane, leaping so shamelessly through my kingdom of deafeningly beautiful quiet, of solitary waltzes, then perhaps I am better off as I am. Free and excited, a quickening note, a strip of the violin's sweet treble and the piano's hapless darting of keys, in this symphony of the dark. This ballet of the stars and the shadows and the trembling breaths of mortality.

I cannot abandon such a song. So I come out, and I dance, and slip back inside when the sun begins to peek over the neighboring mountains.

But I don't always hear the music.

Sometimes, I just watch.