Soapbox

Love Among the Stars

Do you remember?
Do you remember us
sitting in twos and threes and fours
cross-legged, on the floor of your bedroom,
under the tree in the neighbor's back yard,
among the shelves at the library,
in my dorm room,
talking about our plans and wishes and dreams?

Do you remember
when we really believed that we could make the world a better place
just by loving one another better than our parents had,
by seeing things with our clear, unjaded eyes
and then finding a way to tell the world what we saw?
Do you remember
when we all believed that love really could be forever,
and so we held on to each other tightly
as if the covalent bond we shared
might one day spread, reach critical mass
and spark a reaction that could change the world
if we just didn't let go?

But of course, we had to let go.

 I remember those as the most potent times of our lives,
not because we were young
but because we really believed
in ourselves, in a future with limitless possibilities
and in the power of our own dreams.

I remember- for how could I forget?-
when we sat around campfires on clear summer nights,
forever friends,
talking about love and pain, hope and fear
and how we could fix what was wrong with the world
if only the world would listen.
We wove together our words and tears,
love and laughter
with the pop and crack of the flames,
the shriek of cicadas
the pungent smoke in our faces,
the flash of firelight in our dream-filled eyes
and the passion of our convictions.

And so we combined our elements:
earth, air, fire and faith,
our impassioned gestures the sigils and signs of conjuration
as we implored the universe to listen…
and the flames, dancing upward
and the smoke, rising upward
and our dreams, flying upward
among the swirling sparks,
circling, climbing, up to the waiting stars
to join the heat of a billion other visions dispatched
from campfires and dorm rooms and back yards
of a different, better, more love-filled future.

Maybe the stars are our wishes.
What if the lights we see tonight
are the dreams we dreamed as children,
winking and sparkling above us
igniting the cold vault of heaven-
the light of all our dreams streaming across the vastness of space
at the speed of utter faith?
Perhaps it takes so long for even dreams to come back from heaven
that by the time our dreams return to us, fulfilled,
we no longer believe in dreams.
And so they remain suspended forever above us,
unable to come home.

But maybe, somehow,
all those abandoned dreams out there really have changed something
and the universe is a better place because of our love
and we just don't know it.

Do you remember
when we dreamed the stars
and they came to be:
our selves, fulfilled,
a better world,
a love made real-

just impossible, now for us to hold?