Aphelion Issue 293, Volume 28
September 2023
 
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Faded Dreams

by Teri Wachowiak


Once as a child, in the sky I could see
A great dragon airborne, he’s coming for me.
I dreamt that in search he had come to my home,
But I woke in the morning to bare earth and stone.

Thousands of wings once filled all the sky.
Rank upon rank, to char thread they’d fly.
While earthbound we knew some kin who were there.
And we too could dream a child’s wistful prayer.

But the dream of my childhood has faded and died.
No bronze, green or blue to brighten my sky.
I follow the plow and I till the dark loam,
And I bury my dreams in the soil of my home.

Gone now the thread and gone too the weyrs,
Gone all save one, leaving questions and fears.
Passes will come and passes will go.
What takes a people in mass, no one knows.

No great beasts now soar to shadow my land.
Far from my home that last dragon band.
No search will they make outside of their kin.
Never will I be of those dragonmen.

But the dream of my childhood has faded and died.
No bronze, green or blue to brighten my sky.
I follow the plow and I till the dark loam,
And I bury my dreams in the soil of my home.

Now tending the earth and making things grow,
And the cycles and seasons are all that I know.
Our world may have changed but the seasons go on
And dreams disappear with the coming of dawn.

There’s nothing to fear from a sky of clear blue.
No dragons are needed for what we must do.
So I plant a new future for my kith and kin
And let go the ties of a child’s might-have-been.

Now the dream of my childhood has faded and died.
And bound to the earth I never will fly.
But I’m planting my dreams with the seeds that I sow
And watching and waiting to see what will grow.


© 1999, 2005 Teri Wachowiak

Find more by Teri Wachowiak in the Author Index.

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