Dream within a dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream; 

Yet if hope has flown away 

In a night, or in a day, 

In a vision, or in none, 

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem 

Is but a dream within a dream. 

I stand amid the roar 

Of a surf-tormented shore, 

And I hold within my hand 

Grains of the golden sand 

How few! yet how they creep 

Through my fingers to the deep, 

While I weep--while I weep! 

O God! can I not grasp 

Them with a tighter clasp? 

O God! can I not save 

One from the pitiless wave? 

Is all that we see or seem 

But a dream within a dream? 

- Edgar Allan Poe 

Perception

It was almost midnight. The crown prince and his adviser took a break from the paperwork to get fresh air.

Adviser commented - “Ah, so that’s what the moon looks like from the palace.”  The Prince scoffs that the moon is the same , not seeing any difference.

Adviser explained that when he was young, he lived with a theater group. He traveled with his performance troupe extensively, his home was on wheels. He’d thought that the moon looked different in every region—full in one area, crescent-shaped in another and some regions do not have a moon. He was not at the same place long enough to realize that moon changes everyday, and is same everywhere. Laughing at his childhood foible, he asks if the prince has ever entertained totally wrong ideas as a child? , to which the Prince said -

"I was even more foolish than you. When I was a child, I thought this palace was the whole world. I was born and bought up in the east wing of the palace, roaming to west quarters was an adventure for me. My naive head couldn't imagine that there can be other people and many other things outside these walls."

Hey there Clementine

I cried on your shoulder silently through the tragedies. Sadly, You are someone I try to reach more when in pain than in happiness. But also with you, I can talk about the shape of a cumulus cloud, about the song of a thought, or how it reminds me of a person or a moment in past, about a scene in a movie or a quote of a book and about how it made me feel, while I was coming back home this evening, the setting sun made the road look like it was on fire.

Who else would know what this all means? All the magical moments of my life, all the misfortunes I went through.

To the end of the line

Out beyond the ideas of
wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field.
I will meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about

language, ideas, even the phrase 'each other',

doesn't make any sense.

- J M Rumi

Stuff in the box

I wonder why I still have them.
that dried flower in the book,
the pass for a concert,
a worn out train ticket,
that one restaurant bill,
a deep red pebble,
a green frog pencil cap,
the note from my birthday,
or that picture inside the envelope.
Why did I keep them,
through places to places?
I want to know what to do,
with all these dead things I carry.

On friendship's day

One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silences. Often secrets are not revealed in words, they lie concealed in the silence between the words or in the depth of what is unsayable between two people.

- John O’Donohue

Drought and Rain

“Suddenly this defeat,

this Rain.

The blues gone gray,

And the browns gone gray,

And yellow,

a terrible amber. 

I have been easy with trees 

too long. 

Too familiar with mountains. 

Joy has been a habit. 

Now Suddenly 

this Rain.” 

― Jack Gilbert