5^th August 1997

Gauteng - Northcliff Hill

Confrontations

Depositing tiny pebbles of Dreams

The Sand-man slumbered an infant to sleep.

Her companion in moon-lit times

He would wait beneath her cot

After the Star-dust Fairy had swept weariness over her

He would sprinkle spirits of angels' dreams,

Then journey on to slumber another asleep.

She lay on her bed, star-dusted and weary,

Yet her faithful friend no appearance made.

Tossing and turning, she was unable to venture to the other realm.

Behind closed doors a conversation vibrated

Trickling between the hinges and collecting beneath her bed.

The vibrations lingered in the humm of her irregulated breath

Dancing on each wisp of inhalation.

The conversation vibrations grew heavy

Forming granules of coarseness.

These granules wedged themselves under her door,

Collecting clouds of dusty haze.

A single granule fell to the corner of her eye

And swept her into nightmares of desert storms.

Awakening, fatigued and troubled,

She knew not why.

Yet a granule lay on the desert's dune

In dreamland;

which she never revisited; as she knew

not of the engram existence -

of its engram on confrontation.

She now lays her head on a puffy pillow

As trickling salty droplets moisten her ear-lobes,

The memory of the battlefield forms before her ...

Why had she not drawn her sword?

Her lids gave way to exhaustion

As star-dust cloaked her limbs.

Beneath her princess-pillowed bed

A crippled Sand-man struggles to appear.

He holds in his satchel pebbles of dreams

Yet he too collected a granule of a night long past.

Gently, he places the granule, and a pebble

In the fragile corners of her eyes.

Now, he too, may slumber.

She awakens, with a swoprd by her side

A golden glimmer of freedom.

Yet, in its handle

Is engraved, a tiny granule

Taken from desert dunes.