Awakening
Asleep while storms build,
in peaceful slumber
we dance in fantasies,
senses dulled;
nightmares lurk
in the clouds of our pleasures,
of our comforts and beliefs,
of our habits and routines,
thunderheads, gray and billowing
suppress cries and screams
until lightning strikes the earth —
a deluge of reality spills over
into life,
a dream created
by careless desires and denial;
crises finally breach
the dam of our complacency.
We awaken angry and in shock
our dreams so rudely interrupted,
long neglected debts
exhaled like bad morning breath
of indignation and fear;
shaken in naïveté and disbelief
unsteady, as the ground beneath
shifts, we stumble in despair,
in an unfamiliar room
with blank walls
and no door,
in a garden choked by weeds
sown by our own hand,
grief of imagination shattered —
our protective shelter now exposed
to the elements
and to the pains of others.
© 2009 Richard Sidy