The Dream Book



Through the glade there wound a quiet brook 

Where I designed to sit and read a book 

There sung to sleep by the morning sun 

lost the book that I had brought, and dreamt one 

 

As the breeze would stir to turn the page 

I walked strange forests from another age 

Like a ghost that travels on the air 

I passed through a stranger’s dream, and woke there 

 

In that dream world of gray and shadow 

The stranger’s dream was dull and hollow 

Plodding one step on and then the next 

Nothing waiting at the end, only rest 

 

There I forgot it was just a dream 

Forgot that I lay sleeping by the stream 

Became the stranger I didn’t know 

And thought that I was living, even so 

 

Somewhere I slept with eyes wide open 

As I walked a lightless world and ashen 

Where in a languid pool I thought I’d scry 

To ask a single question, who am I? 

 

And there deep into the pool I fell 

The shallow stream stretched to become a well 

'til it tossed me out in a darkened wood 

Beside a sleeping stranger, there I stood 

 

I saw an old book beside his hand 

As he lay sprawled in darkness upon the strand 

A lifetime had passed as the sun had waned 

And there you will find me still, in the glade 

-BA Lawson


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