As we begin to crest the wave of the holiday season and move closer to the end of a year, many of us start, once again, to ponder dreams and desires, both new and old. Forget the resolutions. This is more about the questions that help us sculpt a new world for ourselves. Questions like: what is a our heart’s desire, what do we truly love to do and are we doing it, how would we like to spend each day of the next year of our lives, and for some, with whom? Are we daring to love? And then there’s the larger question – what do we want for our world?

Dreams (and desires) are like stories waiting to be told. Sometimes we dare to look in their direction, feel a flutter in our hearts, and act. Sometimes they filter through the night space rather than the day, hovering.

As I ponder the power such dreams can hold and what waits in those proverbial wings, a wonderful Irish poet comes to mind. Someone whose work I have a fondness for – William Butler Yeats.

Below is a poem in which resides a segment many have come to know. I offer it to you as food for thought. I sense that Yeats would have liked that.

AEDH WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN    –  

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.