The Unrequited Dream
The Dream, it seeds,
Deeply, it grows.
Colorful, it flowers and fruits,
It expands, modifies, and reshapes.
It begins, and inebriates, with possibilities.
The path of its realization,
That is what is never dreamed,
And is never perceived—
For the point of hope is fulfillment, not transformation.
The dream always has the same name:
Hope, and it is the daydream vintage.
It resembles a wine,
Fine, delicate, and flavor-rich.
But in it is an underlying bitterness,
Hidden by the desperation of thirst.
Ignorance often fills that glass,
With overtone flavors of
Desire, jealousy, envy, and pride,
And long-suffering indignity.
The Dream,
It succeeds in part,
It fulfills in part,
But never to the full glass,
Never nearing satisfaction.
Silently enchains and enslaves,
Advanced with age,
The stolen sips of the mayfly life,
Of the hope called the dream.
The wine: Vinegars.
The glass: It empties.
The hope: It falters and fades.
Age modifies and dissuades.
What the dream calls into existence,
That hope, it betrays.
Daydreams give passion to what hopes decry,
A fruit with no real taste,
A wine born out of time.
Empty glass, and the fruit remains.
Nothing gained.
The dust lingers, bitter on the tongue,
Like the last sip of a dream soured with age.
A silence hangs in the air—heavy, breathless.
Then, from somewhere unseen,
A note wavers, uncertain at first,
Struggling to shape itself from memory.
It is not a song of triumph—
It is a song of longing, of absence.
It is the final echo of what was never fully grasped.
The last note wavers, stretched thin in the gloaming air,
A song never finished, a lyric never fulfilled.
It does not vanish—it lingers, naggingly unheard but ever-present,
A whisper in the silence, a reflection of sound in the glass.
The dream always too long, the life always too short.
Copyright May 2021 M. W. Van Dyke
All Rights Reserved
