Dreams

Dreams. The wishes from a birthday cake's candles and falling stars. Secrets whispered to your closest confidant. Words written in a long forgotten journal. Characters and stories dance in your mind with endless possibilities of adventurous roads to be traveled. Then, kindred spirits are scattered to the four winds like dandelions. Suddenly, it's your generation is at the helm of the world as goodbyes are said that close forever chapters of your past. 

Dreams. Visions of a realm beyond our limitations. Star dusted shadows that paint the darkness. 

Dreams. Colors splattered on a canvas. A memory's blurred impressions. Time stands upon the precipice. 

A thousand moments sparkle like grains of sand sifting through one's fingers. The dancer tightens her laces and grasps for the heavens. 

Summer's birth

On these August days summer wanes and sweat drips on my brow as the heat and humidity roast like an oven. Dandelion wishes blow across an open field with Autumn's promise of cooler temperatures and kaleidoscope burnt orange, brown, musty yellow leaves that hang menacingly close like a prized carrot just beyond our grasp. Expectation is in the air as student athletes practice in their empty stadiums suited in their college colors. Pencils, eight by eleven and half notebooks are sentinels on the grocery store aisles. The blank page awaits a child's scrawled handwriting of adventures that span the expanse of one's imagination. Where anticipation sits upon the precipice as the sunflowers dance in the wind with a sunset splattered in pinks, reds, and shadows as the tide turns and another season comes to an end.

The white-washed turn-of-the-century buildings whisper in hushed conversational tones as new and returning students fill the hallways of the oldest California community college. A breath of new life exhaled as stairs creaked and the walls listened. A sweet smile and kindness spoken without words were exchanged. It was a dawn of new beginnings with empty pages of what could be. Within a sea of strangers, education's path offered an open door to tomorrow's dreams. Dreams that were palpable as the beckoning stars when professors came to walk alongside you. Memory's shadows shutter through an abandoned house with yesterday's ghosts that haunt today's steps. As Boris Pasternak states about the character Lara's fate,"a nameless number on a list that was afterwards mislaid" so, are the names and faces from that time that have fallen into shadow. The hourglass's sands etch joy and sorrow in stone like a painted Monarch butterfly's wings.


Once again, I stand upon a threshold. Hope is birthed in what still can be and is to be written. As Frost aptly put it; there is "the miles to go" as I step forth back into crowded hallways, late nights, research papers, grades, and professors.   

Lily of the Lamplight

The raven crows

Under twilight’s glow

Silent screams pierce night’s cloak

Muted tears at the midnight stroke

Requiem’s vale

In shadow’s veil

Where engraved stones wail

A beautiful lily of the lamplight[1]

Takes the butterfly’s flight

To where angels tread

Reunited family threads

Words said

 As the pastor breaks bread

You and your daughter’s silhouette dance

As if by perchance

Alone in the dark

The raven crows

Under twilight’s glow

By Shannon McKemie

07-18-2013

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[1] Lilli Marlene by Tommie Conner 1944

Legacy

Legacy

Senseless agony

Unconscious able brutality

Breath taken

Sunrise awaken

Births tragedy

Hands tremble

Manifold threads assemble

A beautiful tapestry

Unfurls in majesty

The butterfly ascends

As the journey begins

By Shannon McKemie 05-31-2013