Dream Seals

You know how dreams are sometimes
more vivid than life, more compressed,
well, last night I dreamed of you,
whom I haven't seen in 30 years,
and there you were, unchanged,
this child of the Cape Verde Islands,

this pianist crashing through Rachmaninoff
and dancing with Mozart, deep into this
world of music and brilliance,
where I could not follow, could only listen
amazed and let your soul wash over me,

I had loved music before, but with you
I was swept up in a passion without limits,
where the world was lived as a score,
where notes defined a life and the day,
where practice was sacred, and
music filled the cells in the blood,

notes followed us even to the sea,
where we loved like two seals
moving to the echoes of whale songs,
they trailed after us like tiny fish,
crawled over us as we lay spent on the sand,

last night in my dream, we met in a hotel,
by accident as all meetings are,
each there with someone else,
and that rush of spring nights,
the apple blossoms, the air thick with
the promise of honey and the music of you,
the feel of salt on my legs,
seduced me as it had years before,

you sent a note to my room,
I waited for you by the elevator,
and the ping as it stopped at my floor
became the chimes of the alarm clock
and the salt on my legs turned to tears.

© Zen Oleary
October 6, 2003