The dreams began with the old woman
tucked in her cryo-chamber,
a botanist from another time altogether.
Dreams of young green tendrils wrapping
around her chilled wrists and ankles while
she slept the iridescent sleep of the edge of galaxies.
The dreams spread to the surgeon,
kept at 32 degrees Celsius in the pod next door.
Dreams of his own bronchi shrinking while
his heart beat the time of infancy, his skin
bathed in the luminescence of the bio-scanner,
while he was held in the hearts of love long dead.
The dreams finally came to the futurenaut,
the one who mapped light years,
the one who sketched colonies,
the one who slept frozen in his
first shot at immortality.
Dreams of ultraviolet light and newborn
stars ripping through his frontal cortex,
replacing objectives with cosmic gas and
colors that shifted at precarious angles.
They had arrived at the pillars in the heart
of the nebula, birth place of stars and creation.
7,000 light years from an earth frozen by a spent sun.
It was the pillars that brought the dreams of iridescent sleep.
It was the pillars, the creators of stars, that welcomed
her children home and bathed them in colors long dead.
April 2, 2023
published in the 2023 Spire Journal of Arts