A Dream

The sifted sands of childhood-castled fantasies
hourglassed between my parted fingers, and
imaginings of future joys dissolved to fallacies:
Death would call its option on my mortal acre of eternity.
I soared then by a painted door—
my own rich gold-and-knobless portal I had never seen before.
It opened, and I saw inside an ancient paper slip
float in nothingness among the stars and far off galaxies.
I reached for it and saw it slide into a billion-mile-long smile
of growing lovingness upon the lips of everything.
"Thanks for a reason to be,"
the universe whispered to me.


by Robert Hampton Burt
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