TO YOU WHO DREAM

you live in no one’s shadow:
 what shadows
 shadow your desire, the long line
 

of fathers & mothers who sang
 that you might
 sing & hear their voices dissolved in dust
 

still caroling your blood & eyes to be?
 what lost father,
 football coach, first love & panting hope,
 

what prophet howling in your home town,
 singer shouting
 from phonograph, what lines once spun
 

through living breath breathed anew
 in yours when
 you were alone in your bedroom,
 

with your shadow stalking you along
 the wall & under
 the full moon outside among bare trees
 

in the midnight breeze? what lovers
 gave you tender dreams
 that linger still upon your breath?
 

who’ll be shadowed by your shadow
 & hear your voice
 calling, waking him in his most silent moment,
 

long after you are dust & light?
 what worlds will spin
 in loves so spun, alive yet unforeseen?