=Portrait of a Stranger=

In a dream I was an artist,
alone on a bustling street.
My notebook and fine pencil
share a shaded cafe seat.

The crowd flowed past my eyes;
Strangers in the deep,
faces in a wan, familiar
and unrecognizable indeed.

I pulled a random name
from a strand of wayward hair,
cast a line into the midst
of that strange and bright abyss.

I reeled in a flower red,
not a rose but what they call,
Dahlia, oh how you bled
onto my pages in charcoal.

Now a Stranger glimpsed the red,
caught my eye and simply said
something I can't remember,
but my notebook fell and fled.

With surprising speed or spell,
my notebook she caught and strained.
But the Dahlia slipped away,
borne by a breeze of change.

Even Strangers need to rest
so I offered the shaded seat
and my company in thanks,
or was it company I seek?

Stranger from the North,
Do you know the Dahlia was named
after a scientist of your race?
Come tell me now, of your faraway place.

In return, let me draw
a portrait of you, Stranger.
One you may bear forgotten
unto the end of days.

So I began to sketch
as she told me of her world,
the cold and beautiful North
seeped through my trembling page.

When my sketch was done,
I wondered if perhaps I'd drawn
her Nordic twin instead.
Let the Stranger judge I say.

The line of my mouth is stray.
Why do I seem much older in grey?
But her clinical eye still missed
the error I made so fey.

Perhaps it was a test.
Her fringing lock of hair
fell across the opposite way,
as would seem to her in a mirror.

Did I ask her name?
No, strangers we remain.
Will I draw her face again?
Only if it's not the same.

Then she flowed into the crowd,
Stranger once again.
My pencil poured in vain,
white memory onto page.

No matter now, the shade
closes my book and waits,
for the cloud of Strangers
drifts patiently ahead.

Thus I fall asleep from this dream,
into another I awake.
My notebook and fine pencil
are filled with words instead.

Oh, let me sleep again!
Stranger from the North,
come by again and share
this shade and empty page.

That dream would not return,
a Dahlia blown away.
No waking friend or lover
will ever take your page.

In other dreams they wait,
Strangers from what places,
for my notebook and fine pencil
to name them by their faces.

Names I never remember
to ask for in those dreams,
rushing away, those gentle waves
breaking sand against my feet.

A burnt twig in my fingers,
the open shore accepts
my stolen sunset shadow,
sacrifice to sea and sand.

What would you sacrifice,
Stranger, to my heart?
Your Daemon, would I take
as my own flesh and blood?

Let me have instead,
a portrait of you, Stranger.
So that one day I may draw
you- a Stranger no more.