Cobweb Dreams

This poem describes my feelings about dragons, about myself, and about some of my dragon friends.

What can I tell you
of dreams?
What can I tell you of
living gossamer hopes?
How can I speak it through these dead words?
Dead chemical ink on dead tree paper.
Word following word,
marks and squiggles.
How can they express the soul?

Will you, reading these words
for whatever reason, understand?

I can’t say my dreams have been shattered.
Glass will shatter, or crystal.
Things solid, translucent, and real. But
what of dreams never more than wisps and tatters?
Gossamer cobwebs spun by faint hopes in the soul
when the mind knows
all is hopeless.

And yet I dream!

Oh what dreams, where my soul flies free
lifted on wings of hope,
armored in scales of power,
armed with mystic fire!
Can you understand what it is
to be a dragon in your heart?
Perhaps you can.
Perhaps you are one of them,
the ones who dream.

But dreams flee on waking
and the head knows what the soul
refuses to admit.
That fantasy cannot be real.
I know it, but I wish I could forget it.
If only I could...
Perhaps I could...

Are you one of them?
One of the ones who has forgotten reality?
Their dreams are solid,
bright and lucent as stained glass windows.

Sometimes I pity them
their dreams so brittle,
so easily shattered,
and yet...

And yet when I see the tattered cobwebs
of my favorite hopes
I envy them.

Can you see them in my mind, the dragons?
Can these dull words convey the brilliance
of stained glass dreams?
Can you see them soar while I
stand on the ground,
wishing I could fly on wings
of gossamer threads.