au cœur de la nuit

Still I travel north, pushed into the land of the sun, and even the grays of twilight pale until it is always dawn or dusk and night is erased, a part of the past that has been left behind. Villages appear, tiny huts painted bright red, bright blue, with thatched roofs, and in the thatching wildflowers grow, tiny alpine blossoms in white and yellow. The villages are full of children, the sounds of the market, everywhere a tightly choreographed chaos. The children take my hands, grasp my skirts, pull me towards the maypole in the village green, and everywhere is the singing and the sound of bells that are both foreign and familiar.

We dance, I realize the song is the same song of my dreams from my childhood, that I know these people even though I have never been here before. In this land there is no night, and I ask the children: where do you store your dreams, where is your heart when you are asleep? And they tug my hair and laugh and run towards the edge  of the village where the forest begins. Our dreams are the wild animals, they tell me, we see them, but only from a distance. Our dreams are shy and untamed and do no seek our company.

They pull me back towards the bright cottages, the thatched roofs, and I glance towards the shadows of the forest, where there is movement but not form. And then I let go of the night, I allow my dreams to depart wild and free, and in the pale dawn sleep without slumbering, surrounded by the chorus of song.