Frightened by a barking dog
It jumped three feet in the air
And landed on its feet
That was its last athletic act
Because it ran into the street
Straight under some wheels
That crushed its back legs
It’s never the immediate threat
But the one waiting just beyond
That does you in
Of all the gifts you’ve given me
The greatest is this
Where did you find the courage
To call me by my right name?
God inscribes us into His Book of Life
But I dreamt I saw the book of each person
It’s not just our deeds
But our hopes and dreams
Something of our reach
Of our essence
They were filled with wonder
And potential
And joy unbound
And once you read them
Even after they were closed
The joy had jumped off the pages
In the form of your loved ones
Here and gone
Singing
And you had only to run outside
To meet them
It was the kind of dream it hurts to wake from
Not just because we were together
But because we were ‘really talking’
As you’d have put it
And I had the right words
Though they started to slip away
Even as I spoke them
As I slipped back towards wakefulness
And away from you
But I’ll try to put down some of them here
You were mentioning
All the exhaustion and uncertainty
And even despair that you’d lived
And I told you you should rejoice
Because these are symptoms of the heart
And that I knew
The Being to Whom we return
Is concerned with matters of the heart
