Midnight Hour

When time lingers most, in the midnight hour,

I will reach beyond this earth, past the bands of twilight,

a quiet threshold, and sound the new arrival

where the outer world dissolves.

Formless

I

fall.

And draw near a deeper space

to meet the dream muse,

and her monster

in the puzzle and the paradise.

She.

She, who shows me new and ancient things, dimly visible:

the science of a handshake, amidst a crumbling tower

the art of goodbye between pastlife lovers,

the history of a people emersed in greed,

the way of diplomacy between warring nations,

the cosmos of art through the centuries,

the origin of the unicorn, the legend of the fall

the messages of the holy, both the cryptic and serene

the way to hold a human heart.

She holds open a flaming door, to the songs of my ancestry.

She hums my self-undoing in her myth and prophecy.

She reads the future in my palm as she tickles my feet.

She rounds my scattered thoughts

like encircling dandelions

and makes me choose which i will keep.

"See things as they truly are!"

she demands,

seduces,

pleads with me.

She, who enflames my internal seas,

to reveal where my eyes fail me.

And though I may doubt her,

time after time,

still, she comes.

and my return to the morning light,

the notice of something faint,

more curious and less afraid,

as her slow release gives way

to a growing honesty.