Castling

For Cathy’s 75th Birthday

I dreamt last night I left you
In a nocturnal visit
With another woman
Who still was you, traded in
For a counterfeit,
An oneiric version
Of our lifelong dream,
Like the dog who drops
His steak for its reflection
In the stream.

Nice trick, brain.
But no guile,
No simulation,
No pantomime or scam
Could bring us, in
The buzzing hive of time,
Given how the world piles
Lives on lives,
To our incidental rhyme.

Even these words intervene
In how we might
Have spent today, among these
Blowing tamarinds, these
Teeming coral seas,
Too real for the cinematic
Wiles of dreams.

Only in the warm progression
Of our days, beneath this
Certain, predetermined run
By lightening skies
Above the ocean’s hazy vellum,
Does the crafty chess
Of night break out
Into clear horizons,
Mild and fair and cloudless,
As our common suns
Awake.

March 4th, 2023
Kaiholu