The Last Song of the Kauai O’o

I went into your dream last night.
I went in quietly, so as not to disturb
the elegant symmetry you were projecting
so vividly onto the magic neural screen.

In the dream, everything seemed real.
Isn’t that how it usually seems, even when
we believe that we are wide awake?

In the dream, there were seven pale angels.
They were traveling back and forth into the cruel
dimensions, rescuing many bewildered denizens.

In the same way you would lift a small fallen bird
that had collided with a window, believing it to be
open space, so too did they lift up the broken
souls, and how so very tenderly!

As I observed the scene, you reached towards me.
You lifted me up, lovingly, in the same way you
would a dazed Hermit Thrush. Then you gently
placed me on a waiting branch.

There I listened, and as I did I heard the plaintive song.
It came from the heart, from a lone bird’s beating heart.
It was the last of its species — all of the rest were
now extinct — and still it was crying for a mate,
a mate that would never come.

Some may wonder how this could happen. I don’t know.
In the dream, everything is born, thrives for awhile,
and then disappears — birds, humans, suns and moons,
whole universes of glowing galaxies come and go.

Then the angels arrive. They are pale. They are seven.
Each has a special name which we cannot say.

If anyone could possibly hear the name, it would sound
like the poignant cry of a forgotten bird, the last
of its kind, echoing softly into the void.

In one eternal moment, it would fill the space of vast
emptiness with a beauty for which even angels
could not themselves account.