I walked across the Levels today

I walked across the Levels today
and met a dream
coming by the other way
I asked him
“What will I be?”
He turned and asked the same
for it was me
We stood a while lost in thought
as Time slept

When the day awoke the sun was in the sky
The dream spoke
and asked me by and by:
Of all the places that I’d been
and all the things I’d seen
what of these I’d kept?
I gazed into a rhyne and saw the past
carried in the flow
till everything I'd known
was lost among the Drains
The dream wept

Then the silence spoke

The hush of rain on water
played among my thoughts
When I looked up from my feet
The dream had vanished in the breeze
and left the trees to whisper me awake
I watched the herons pitch
from field to field
and saw reflected in the lake
the features of the man
I must accept