Furious fire, erupting forth,
He is lava.
Gnarling, whorling, devouring
Relentlessly reaching for her.

Calm, deep,
She is sea.
In her patient caresses,
Shaping, smoothing, succoring.

When they touch,
As she smothers his furnace,
In the steam and pain,
A new land is born.

They said she did not need him,
Was better than him,
Was debasing herself.

That she was pure,
A shining light,
Brightness incarnate.

That he was her shadow,
A blemish,
A blot.

Still she shone on, afraid,
For without his shade,
Was she even there?

In the years after he left
(To darken another’s flame)
Her aura cast his outline upon the world.

Follow your dreams — they are the only real thing.

Everything else is impermanent, temporary, fragile and inevitably subject to the ravages of time. Dreams are infinite, are enduring, are strong, and grow more complex and beautiful as the sands drop through the hour glass. Dreams are the perfect circles on the imagined canvas, not yet muddled by the imperfections of the brush or the unsteady drafter’s hand. Dreams are music to reality’s noise.

It is not failing to achieve your dreams that should concern you — No, it is failing to have a dream. Then you sit in the ocean, whether stormy or doldrums, and you know not how to rig the boat, how to use the wind that otherwise seeks to grind you to dust. The storms move, the currents carry, your dying useless carcass. The other dreamers smell it. You are carrion. Plagued. They sail their boats clear.

So dream! This is what hope is — a dream that powers. With hope, all barriers collapse — what you want is on the other side. Hope drives the waking moments. Hope drives the sleeping moments. Hope is reason enough.

But what, you say, what if the dreams are dead, or dying? What then? Then turn to farming. If nothing is growing, plow the fields of life. Let change be the blade that turns the earth. If slowly growing, find ways to water those dreams. With fancy, with imagination, with fantasy. In dark winters, cover your dreams and protect them from the elements that would destroy them. In light summer, share your dreams, let your fantasies pollinate the other fields. For shared dreams are the most powerful of all.

And what if too tired to dream? That prescription is the most simple of all: rest. Your body was meant to dream, wants to ponder, wants to reach the infinite. It needs but time and permission. Yield to it, and the world will yield to you.