What glittering dreams are born
That hold such promise bright
That stir with faint flutters
Like erratic moth flight!
Ascending and descending,
My soul to heaven is flown
Exhilarated, fearful,
Up dream’s ladder, then down.
A voice, a word, a promise
Like Abraham’s nation,
Grandiose and elusive,
Holding out once begun.
Such dreams as these, as immense
As the sands on the shore
In the darkness glow, now fade;
faded, burn all the more.
Now old, now older, now dead,
Now trust, now laugh, trudge on;
Such dreams as these will remain.
Days, years, decades gone,
Trudge through sand– sands of the sea!
Blessing of all the earth!
Sand, time flow through empty hands–
One solitary birth.
Is that all there is to be?
A single grain, no more?
Trudge on through sand and darkness;
The dream burns as before.
I have not Abraham’s faith
Nor will to be patient.
I shrink, I quail, and now rise:
The dream is insistent.
Looking, hoping, expecting,
Waiting, aging, and gone.
Dark generations pass ‘til
The grain begets the Stone.
I grasp that such dreams as these
Which in the dark are born,
Pursued through the long night
Come true only at dawn.
–Teri Ong, April 2011
