Dreamers
Dreaming everyday dreams—
Lost in mental alcoves,
Never shared never spoken
Never rising beyond orthodox sleep.
Together
Many multitudes of memories intertwined
Like wind whistling between buildings.
Something moving Chills the skin
But indistinct; en mass and lacking the distinction
Altogether felt.
Dreamers dreaming together
The blunt force of silence
Like the buzz behind background speech
Felt among the masses.
Their thoughts are thinking—though not
Specific dreams
Recalling the missed, the gained, the
Hoped for, the ironic, compassion.
Consider those dreams
Among children who play and run from fears while so many multitudes
Of dreamers dreaming everyday thoughts together
Seek imaginary hope. Dreamless sleeping.
Or waking
Only to remember nothing of dreams or hope
Or even proper excitement or alarm.
Waking only to the taste of a dry mouth and the bothersome
Trouble of another day to trudge through.
Won’t we begin beholding
Every dreamer’s spirit accompanying us?
Or have we forgotten how to catch even that little breath
Of the massed winds about us?
Hope, let’s say.
Not dreams while sleeping, but
Dreams where each of us stand at any fateful moment
Dreams in the romantic, hopeful sense.
What if dreamers cease dreaming?
What is the price to pay for wholesale silence?
One nation, under
God Dreamless Asleep—
Set us alight
Who dare to wake
Dreamless dreamers,
Shaken—slumbering without dreams
And remind the waking
When the sleeper’s voice returns.