Alberto's Dreams.

 

Ultimately, "Alberto's Dreams" captures the universal human anxiety of the unlived life. 

Alberto is a battle-weary traveler who has survived the "four winds" of existence, yet his final, most profound battle is entirely internal. 

He dies or fades away, wondering if he should have crossed a sacred threshold with the one who got away, leaving the reader suspended in his final, haunting question. 

(A lone voice whispers)

As I lie nightly in my bed of metaphorical red roses, and as my soul flickers in the encroaching darkness

A midnight battle commences within my mind 

Do I chase that mesmerising handmaiden just beyond my sight, bestowed by fate

Or was our preconceived time in the Master of all Ceremonies great book done, and now it's too late

As I breathe in as the pain eases and the wheezing stops

I can feel her lullabies and needs reaching out

Like the long-lost look Edith gave Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah 

Before she too turned into a pillar of salt

As I sit in this darkness consuming this twenty-five-year-old malt whiskey 

I wonder where she is 

as my inner mind, filled with thoughts of ever-swirling prose, goes misty

I once walked in the Land of the Shadows 

Walked knee-deep in the primordial sludge upon secretive moors, serenaded by echoes from a light-giving Arkenstone 

I fought the four winds

Maelstroms and dark mysteries to find my own battle-weary path home 

But when I pause for a quiet moment and I look back 

Across the many memories of my own tapestries and deep tributaries 

Stretched here before me from here to my birth 

I always wonder

What would happen if I caught her soft hands

And carried her willing and wide-eyed 

Across that sacred threshold

Into my Red Church 

(C)

Copyright John Duffy