The Reality of Love

This dream is over in an instant,
the sharp upright pain in the heart,
lunging forward into wide-eyed reality,
as if the racing nerve endings might
never return to a deep relaxation in sleep.

That is how Love can be.

Not the nightmare, but the
return to normal awareness,
realizing that all your life before this
was just a wooden fantasy,
alone, without substance, waiting
to be breathed into

until that first person reminded you,
touched you, woke you from slumber
to the wild-paced rhythm of
belonging to life,

they woke you to yourself,
at first a stranger (perhaps the nightmare),
but then groggily coming to see
that the aloneness never really was,
that the darkness was just a dream

and Love is the home of the world.