To Dream, To Sleep. . .

To Dream, To Sleep. . . 

For Kelsey

It’s hard to think of something sweet

When all is bitter and sour.

The sad songs shuffle on repeat;

Each minute seems an hour.

The sleep, you wish, would somehow come,

But your eyes, they fear to close,

For into dreams, you’d then succumb,

And of what, God only knows.

With thoughts like these inside your head,

You fear to dare to dream,

And so awake, you lie instead

In silence’s deafening scream.

But like a thief, the sleep breaks in,

Its deep surprising rest,

And as every day, this day begins

With one new hope at best.

You think perhaps that yesterday

A dream was all it was,

That with this rising sun, you pray,

Death never really does.

It doesn’t come; it wouldn’t take

My mother, no not now,

And that perhaps just for my sake

She’d still be here somehow.

And then comes creeping into your mind

The sweetest thought of all,

And joy, at peace, at once you find

From just this simple call:

“Yours is the dream, your mom’s awake,

And you are there asleep,

And though from you, her, I did take,

Always this blessing keep.

That one day you will rise and see

Your own true morning sun,

And there, you, she, and I will be

When your sleep on earth is done.

Fear not the dreams that fill your eyes,

Instead look through your heart.

For nothing there ever dies,

Nor is it torn apart.

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"Throughout the long night a man wept 
At the bedside of a sick man.
When day dawned the visitor was dead—
And the patient was alive" 
                                     ~ Saadi

"To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,"  
                                      ~ Hamlet