Love and hope in difficult times
Slumber, The Dream Bearer
When your love is half a world away

slumber quietly circles earth leaving trails of dreams in her wake nightfall tugs to pull her along some are more reluctant to sleep
slumber loves the insomniacs they lie awake and wait for her some wish to send dreams to lovers watching for night to come their way
slumber gingerly holds their dreams knowing she bears precious cargo dreams are all the lovers have now filled with hope for nights together
slumber arrives one night to find a lonely lover’s bed empty she cannot stop to look for them* nightfall tugs to pull her along
slumber is sad not to take dreams the lover’s beloved won’t have hope nightfall tugs to pull her along she has others’ dreams to carry
slumber wearily approaches the house of the lover’s beloved she and nightfall arrive to find the lovers entwined as they sleep
slumber whispers soft to nightfall lovers’ dreams really can come true

* I intentionally did not assign gender identity to the lovers, using the pronoun “them”. It was my desire that as many people as possible could relate to this poem about “distance challenged” lovers. At one time I was one myself. I became adept at calculating time differences in an instant between Alabama and Germany! Love is Love.
In my prompt for the Bing Image Creator, I chose the style of award winning children’s book author and illustrator Vashti Harrison. Since I wrote this poem as an adult bedtime story, her whimsical style produced the perfect image. I admire her for her contributions to children’s literature. She strives to engage and excite young Black readers by providing them with characters with whom they can identify.
From her website VashtiHarrison.com:
Vashti Harrison is the #1 New York Times bestselling creator of Little Leaders, Little Dreamers, and Little Legends and the illustrator of Andrea Beaty’s I Love You Like Yellow, Matthew Cherry’s Hair Love, and Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic’s Hello, Star, among others. She received a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor for Lupita Nyong’o’s Sulwe and is also a two-time recipient of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Children.
I would like to extend an invitation to the following people to take part in the Paper Poetry prompt for September, “Love and hope in difficult times.” So Elite (one day you are going to be brave and respond!), Writer, Sara Moton, TzeLin Sam, and Samantha Lazar. Submission guidelines can be found here:
Thank you Indubala Kachhawa for this month’s prompt.
As always, thank you Carolyn Hastings for your gentle editing! You are always so kind and patient!
