A dream, most ornate thing, held at the edges with tiny strings,
To dress a King, to adorn a Queen, to mend a fool’s cap.
It is one of those things that is child’s play.
Yet these toys haunt an old and orderly mind.
They sew together the sinews and muscles of things imagined,
More faded now than the ephemera they were.
Here now is a hope: It hobbles as it dances, yet does not fall.
There, a fresh love like a sprout breaking through the snow.
An old man smiles a softer smile at feeling desire at all
To remind him yet he lives, even as the strings loosen.
But his song is gone. His frame like his sagging mind
Can only long for the thing beyond his power to grasp again.