A Dreamers Love

I used to meet you after dark

In that soft old country of my mind

You wore the face I saved for grace

The one I found in prayer and time

I knew your hands, I knew your name

Before your footsteps touched the floor

I loved you first in sleep and smoke

And wanted you forevermore

Then morning broke my spell in two

And left your shadow thin and true

I searched for you in every sky

But my own heart would not reply

I lost you in the morning

I lost you with my tears

The perfect deep love faded

When I stopped meeting years

I lost you in the morning

When sleep let go of me

I loved you in the darkness

Then woke and set you free

Now I lay my white sheets down

Like a veil for what I knew

The room is full of afterglow

Of all the worlds I made for you

I held you in a thousand nights

I fed your ghost with tender light

But when the dreaming left my hands

You slipped away before the light

I blamed the dawn, I blamed the moon

I blamed the silence in the room

But truth came like a wedding bell

I loved a world I cast myself

I lost you in the morning

I lost you with my tears

The perfect deep love faded

When I stopped meeting years

I lost you in the morning

When sleep let go of me

I loved you in the darkness

Then woke and set you free

Oh, what a cruel, sweet mercy

To wake and find the seam

That stitched your face to longing

That stitched my heart to dream

If love can live by candle

Then tell me why it dies

When daylight names the empty bed

And tears return my eyes

I lost you in the morning

I lost you with my tears

The perfect deep love faded

When I stopped meeting years

I lost you in the morning

But still I feel you near

I loved you in the darkness

And grieve you waking here