This morning, I returned from Starbucks
and the house was quiet
so I lay down in the bed in the guest room
and gathered the pillows against me.
I found myself dreaming of my older son, Dan,
and he was small, perhaps five.
He was standing on a stool
and we were talking about something together
and, in a moment of my inattention,
he toppled off and fell on the floor.
I picked him up, scared that he was hurt,
and stood him on the stool again
and held him
checking to see if he was OK.
I whispered to him that he was brave
and that he was my very special son
and how very much I loved him
and always would.
I told him he was growing up so fast
and that soon he'd be 17
and grown into a man
and that this time of ours was so precious
and I hugged him against me.
And then, as so many times before,
I awoke surprised and saddened
to find myself
decades into the future.
The smell of his hair, the fineness of his skin,
the trust in his eyes,
the warmth of holding him
and the simple and profound love of that moment
were still there, as a warmth, filling me
though he's grown now and almost 40.
I've had this dream, or something very similar,
many times about both my boys.
Always the love, the the treasuring
and then the awaking and the sadness.
I treasure these secret up wellings
of my heart's past;
these deep emotional memories
that bind me to these boys - now men.
I would call them and tell them what I dreamt,
but I fear they'd think me
an emotional old man having a maudlin moment
in the midst of their busy lives.
So, I'll leave these words here
in my collection of poetry and thoughts
and, perhaps, someday, they will find them
and share this moment with me, then.
A moment so very precious
and present to me now
and yet so very lost and ephemeral
in the curtains of time.
gallagher
22 Apr 08
— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —