Excerpted from upcoming The Cynglish Beat by Tim Reynolds from Cometcatcher Press.
BOTTLE-PICKERS DREAM
The daily life of one is the nightly dream of the other.
A dumpster-diving bottle-picker dreams dreams of tightened
spokes, spinning pedals, and knobbed tires between clinking pickings, and his thoughts are full of having his own bicycle shop…
A bicycle shop owner dreams of lift and drag and someday soaring eagle-like through the clouds above his world.
I dream, you dream, even a king can dream a dream.
The thirtyish lawyer dreams the dream of being a parent…
The scattered, harried, young single mother dreams of court and of one day representing terrified, troubled teens.
They put one foot in front of the other.
They take one step out of their dreamer’s self-imposed, square-cornered, reinforced box.
And then along comes your ‘wit’, your ‘wisdom’, your unsolicited, unwanted, uncaring, unctuous utterances.
Why do you long and loud laugh at me dreaming my dream?
At us, dreaming our dreams?
What shape of judgemental, self-justifying, jackass says “You are wasting your time”?
What god woke up today and appointed you Judge of Dreams, Mocker of Hopes?
Is your life so perfect that
your reality has answered
your dream?
Or is the lack of loved living in your life creating such strife that your misery pleads and begs for company?
Dreams are sacred… sacrosanct… not for you to waddlingly weigh in on and take tragic pot-shots at,
Even though the dreamers have blogged their dreams and Tweeted their life desires far off into the ether.
A heart-and-soul Food Bank volunteer dreams of being a folk singer…
A folk singer tells stories and dreams of feeding his nation’s children.
A receptionist dreams of being a Shiatsu Master…
A Shiatsu Master dreams of being a belly-dancer.
A musician dreams of winning a Pulitzer for literature…
A best-selling author dreams of recording an album.
The seldom-spoken-aloud dream of one is the too-often-taken-for-granted living life of the other.
And always, criticism crashes a crushing crescendo on dream and dreamer alike…
The dreamer bends under the unwarranted onslaught…
Then half-smiles, opens the soul’s door just that much further…
Turns away from the mirror
And allows the dream’s strength of Titan
to reinfuse,
to reinvigorate,
to renew.
Now stop telling me that I cannot should not would not do it and let me dream my life and live my dream.
~
Images and words copyright 2010 Timothy Reynolds.
The Tao of Tim 
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