Dreams Come to Die on the Page

One by one

dreams come to die on the page

The news made the rounds

and they came from all corners

to die on the page

like elephants travelling to their graveyards

I witnessed their death-throes

unable to hold out a glass of water

I looked at them for the first time

and for the last time

before wrapping them in the funerary shroud of my speech

and stretching them out on the little boat

that once was their cradle

The current sweeps them away

and quickly brings them back to me

as if the wide-open sea wasn’t out there

but right here on the page