The Rise and Fall of a Dream Called Love

A recognition sweetly full of madness
The poet’s heart knows joy as well as sadness

Dreamt I was a flower giving pleasure
To golden bees who sought my tasty treasure

I turned into a playful dolphin calling,
“In love why do we always talk of falling?”

I float, I fly, I leap, I run, it’s funny,
A bee transforms her nectar into honey

So, here I sit composing words to rhyme
The way I feel this moment, space, and time

Awakened on a coastal fog-filled island
Whose yellow desert valleys lulled me under
And blue-green skies spelled clarity with thunder

Birds were calling, “come, the storm’s approaching,
build your nest away from hunters’ poaching”

O, heed the call of distance, not of flame,
“Tis but a spinning, yearning maya game

However, if thirst should drive you further up that hill
Recall the ocean’s waters are not still

From fish to bird I flew across the sky
Far from my love and now I wonder why
Illusions are not made to fit the eye

The rise and fall of a dream called love



~Nicole Raisin Stern
Paris, 1991