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.

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