Awakening

Last night I dreamt of a distant buddhist
shrine surrounded by boundless rainforest,
a crisscrossing trail climbing to the hilltop
where it loomed like a ship on a verdant sea.
I was home at last from a surreal passage,
wherein I'd traversed some briar-banked
river of tortuous currents, and grappled
with the demons of my soul. I awakened
then, my left brain and right arm numb
in the predawn chill, the ego dazed
and dumbstruck with awe and wanderlust,
the dream’s wordless meaning fast fading.
And yet the words whisper nonetheless:
in the diaphanous leaves of waking aspens,
in the soothing coos of a mourning dove,
in the soft breaths of a sleeping lover,
or the muffled grief of an anguished ghost,
whose troubles will not be put to rest,
until we meet and embrace like old friends.
But that is another dream for tomorrow,
as I rise from my bed to greet the day,
its apparitions now supplanting the past,
once again not-so-neatly stored away
where all our cherished realities become
a dream within a dream within a dream.