The Dream Keeper

Bring me all of your dreams, 
You dreamers. 
Bring me all of your 
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them 
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too rough fingers
Of the world. 

– Langston Hughes

As The Stars Shine

As the stars shine in my mind,
The only light dimly shines
My head at last in joy
When first so coy.
Only moments though.

As the stars bright my dreams
Happiness is what I think I see.
Finally my life turns around
Joy now is just as profound
As the stars shine.

But dreams come with sleep
And stars, the night keeps
And the sun rises to its glory
When all the sights seem so gory
To eyes that enjoy the nightly tint
To the mind at first sight spent.

As the stars fade into the dark
The eerie night left its mark
In my dreams and thoughts of happiness
Through the steam of day and its loneliness.

– Andy Greenwald

My Grandmother’s Love Letters

There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough
For the letters of my mother’s mother,
Elizabeth,
That have been pressed so long
Into a corner of the roof
That they are brown and soft,
And liable to melt as snow.

Over the greatness of such space
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.

And I ask myself:

“Are your fingers long enough to play
Old keys that are but echoes:
Is the silence strong enough
To carry back the music to its source
And back to you again
As though to her?”

Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.

– Hart Crane