Lakeside Dreams

In the tranquil calming silence
Of this lake-side weekend house
I loaf in my familiar chair
And watch exhausted sun
Drop finally down
Into a glassy mirrored bath
Of still-life
Amethyst blue
While distant bullfrog chants his prayer
And syncopates
With contrapuntal loon
To-whoo
Who bids the day his comforting adieu
Each note a tonic for my pain
My voltage drained
I grateful sink
And dream my precious dreams of you
Again
As endless fireflies wink

Yes,
It was even here
That I,
It seems,
A fresh-faced bounding boy,
Tin soldiers on the floor,
With boyish jactitations
Created hostile nations
Awful engines
Spoils of war
Imaginary corps
I lived within my toys
And first conceived my early dreams
Of you

My mother read to me
When I was two...
The rhymes of Mother Goose
(I was just new
and instantly seduced)
The best of times for
Little Boy Blue
Come blow my horn
Then one day
I turned three
And fast I learn'd to read
All dusty books and fairy tales
Dragon claws,
Woodsman's saws
And pirate sails
Scarecrows in the corn
The Jacks and Jills
And tumbling pails
My heart beat fast
And I would laugh at these
Canards of gransoise scale
(But some were sad)
I read
And read
'Til my eyes went bad
Upon my bed
A blanket near the fire
My nose book-bound and
Burning with desire
To escape (already)
Break stun-gun run away
Swirling in the eddies
While young fairies play
Fantasnization imaginary
Milk maids weeping near the dairy
And I incurable
Lost romantic
A valiant knight
Whose life was too pedantic
Enchanted armor,
(Gold, of course)
The handsome prince
Upon the wildest,
Brimstone snorting horse
The kindest aged
Wisest king
Who foiled the wicked
Witch's scheme
Who had the best of everything
If the world was milk
I was the cream
It was then I dreamt
My cherished dream
Of you

Real life was strife
And not much splendid
Thus I devised a world for us
Where dreams came true
And poems never ended
And everyone was always happy
And all the mommies loved the daddies
No one ever left alone
It was my perfect sanctuary
My castle and my home
All cock and bull
Perhaps,
But enduring, yes,
Though time elapsed...
I thought someday that you would come
I kept the faith and trusted full
My other half
My princess with a sugar plum
A wand of spells
'Tween finger long
And perfect thumb
Alas, my vision may have been
Another complex faerie trap

And yet, once more,
This one last time
I sit within this chair of mine
And watch exhausted sun
Drop quickly down
Into the glassy mirrored bath
Of still-life
Amethyst blue
While distant bullfrog chants his prayer
And syncopates
With contrapuntal loon
Who bids the day his comforting adieu
Each note a tonic for my pain
My voltage drained
I grateful sink
And dream my precious dreams of you
This final time
Again