The Dream-Mender's Daughter

The dream-mender’s daughter goes fishing for dreams,

In rivers of lost hopes, and chattering streams,

With her butterfly net and her hook-a-duck hook,

The dream-mender’s daughter snags dreams from the brook.

The dream-mender’s daughter pulls toys from the current,

Watches and notebooks and rings by the dozen,

For dreams given up and beyond all repair

Wash away through the ditches and all end up there.

The river of dreams is narrow and deep;

It bends and it twists past the trees as they sleep;

Under branch, over stone, past the moss-covered boulder,

Where the dream-mender’s girl sits with net-over-shoulder.

And borne by the current, tugged by the water,

Strange things bob and spin past the dream-mender’s daughter;

Little fragments of life, lost; crushed; swept away,

Old teddies and papers and crystal ashtrays.

If it catches her eye it is plucked from the river,

Turned over and over in a child’s little fingers,

Some she’ll bring to her mother if she thinks she can mend it,

Some she keeps, or returns and away she will send it.