Awakening the Dream
by Odin Roark

Even in a dream
A poet’s page
Starts blank

Restlessly
The inscrutable pen hovers
Awareness preparing absorption
Like a dry valley of nature
Awaiting tributaries to ripple convergence
A lake to be
Remaining patient

Unaddressed questions resurface
Even as pebbles hamper flow once again
Rocks demand navigation
And boulders bent on containment
Concede the rush into reservoirs

Expression’s pause
Ellipsis of control
Fails holding back the surge of ink to paper
As grammar’s first trickle bodes further volume

Restless verbs urge images forward
A tide of willingness waits
Wanting complete its existence

Around mind’s shoreline
Animation commences cautiously
Needing to quench
Parched wanderings
Staying ever mindful
Poisoning is often invisible

Unexpectedly

This once empty page
Experiences a downpour
Cooling passion’s vacillating temperatures
Into pastels of emotion
Urging hard layered resistance
Into malleable thought

Pauses and stops
Commas and periods
Paragraphs of reason and compassion
Flow freely
Like spillways of a dam

For some
The purge of resolve
Often disappoints

How delicate such a dream
Excruciating at times
Often revealing once invisible sentences
To correct lingering mistakes

Awakening retains echoes
The waning past remaining familiar
Like battlefields of regret
Unpunctuated sentences
Forever fragments of one’s war

Such a dream’s ending
Always makes known
The expectant pen
Forever willing to just be held
Demanding nothing
Merely to remain
A trusted friend
Knowing at times…
It is the only friend