In The Dreaming

I found you in my dreams last night.

I’m not sure if it was you
or the late spring lightning that woke me,
but I knowingly slipped out of bed and down the hall
in that old Stanford t-shirt I should have thrown out decades ago.
You were standing by the big piano in the dining room,
the sound of a low octave ‘G’ caught
by settling dust trapped in iridescent moonbeams.
Each note you struck filled the room for a few seconds
and then washed out like an old photograph.

The hours shifted and radiant light surrounded you,
not unlike the Madonna of Old Masters.
How beautiful you looked, how peaceful,
practically enraptured by the simplicity of each hammer
striking its wire,
each note a pitch-perfect elegy
to your fears and worries.

There was clarity in those keys that are so rarely played,
something odd yet familiar,
something that commanded a new ear
and an old heart that understands the purity
and infinite nature of every precious note.

I came to sit on the bench beside where you stood,
and a shiver ran through me
as my warm legs pressed down on cold glassy wood.
We glanced at each other, saying nothing.
I slid over to make room for you.
And we played.

We played thousands of beautiful, perfect notes together,
each one pinned with a little piece of human frailty
and released into the night.

In the living,
perhaps all of this takes place in a trendy chain restaurant
as we nibble on nachos and make small talk
or perhaps it exists in a pale green and lavender waiting room
with shushed encouragement and awkward handholding.

But in the dreaming …
in the dreaming we sit very still at the big piano in the dining room
and there is harmony
and liberation
and forever.