To sleep
Descending softly
In floating footfalls
Drifting down
A green hill in spring
To a far valley
Visible as the quiet sum of wonder and desire
The outer world recedes
Clamoring war of urgent banality
Of imagined lack and ferocious scheduling
All fading, for a time
At first still audible
And real around the edges
But increasingly irrelevant
Against the siren pull
The seductive wondrous slide
As the body lets go
As the mind enfolds
Into the vale of sleep
Where a light breeze ruffles the sycamore leaves
With a sussurating static of soothing white noise
Where we never leave the womb
And the universe exhales
Transpiring the warm, wet stuff of dreams
Outer world now far behind
Darkness falling like a gray blanket
Over everything
Warm, soft, a shield and a comfort
And at last, in the quiet dark
Night now fallen across the vale
All withdrawn and seeming dead
The dark is punctuated by sudden sparks
Hardly remembered, the mind's trick
Each a galaxy in a sand grain
Dreams
What transpires in the vale at night?
Only a sudden waking can sometimes tell
And cobwebs of drenched emotion tear asunder
As we emerge
Radiant thorns piercing through to the waking world
Half-remembered, so quickly receding
Back to the vale
A mirror life
Of chaos beneath the soft blanket
Gone now, fading, ephemeral
Even those who quickly scribble a few lines
Can never recall the full power and scope
Of the infinite majesty, joy, danger, and fear
That we all carry on our daily rounds