Ponder, O Morpheus, the Night Sky
“Beyond dreams lies a silence where even gods wonder.”
Prelude: The Summoning of Morpheus
Morpheus, Keeper of the Silent Looms,
hear now the summons not of those who seek forgetfulness,
nor of those who plead for soft illusions to cradle their weary minds—
but of one who, standing alone beneath the immeasurable firmament,
dares to bid thee ponder.
Ponder, thou Weaver of Shadows, the night sky:
the endless, ink-deep vault where Orion’s belt cinches the waist of darkness,
where scattered fires—blue, white, and ancient red—
whisper of secrets too vast for mortal tongues.
Not for dreams of idle comfort do I call thee forth,
but for contemplation;
to set aside for a moment thy ceaseless crafting of mortal visions
and lift thine ancient gaze upward,
where the silent percussion of dying stars
beats out the hidden music of creation.
For if thou, master of phantoms and bringer of luminous memories,
shouldst pause to wonder at that boundless mystery,
then perhaps the soul of man, frail and flickering though it be,
might dare likewise to ask:
Who dreams the dreamers, O Morpheus?
Whence come the visions thou bestowest?
And what lies beyond the last dream, beyond the last star, beyond the last breath of sleep?
Thus the greater query is born, trembling on the tongue of the sleepless,
yearning toward the silence that gathers all speech.
The Greater Query: A Dialogue with Morpheus
Soul:
If thou, O Shaper of Phantoms, canst be stilled by wonder,
then hear the questions borne upon my waking breath,
fragile as they are, yet earnest as the stars are ancient:
Who first whispered the dream into being, before ever thou didst fashion it?
From what unseen wellspring do the rivers of vision flow?
Are the dreams of men but fractured echoes of a deeper song,
or do they weave even now the hidden fabric of worlds yet unborn?
Morpheus (in thought):
Dreams are the trembling of the soul against the veil of the infinite.
They are not born of my will alone, Seeker,
but arise from the deep soil where memory, longing, and the first light entwine.
I but give them form; I do not summon them from the abyss.
Some dreams, frail though they seem, stitch the very edges of what is to be.
Mortals, in dreaming, unknowingly shape the unborn dawn.
Soul:
Is it given to us—dust briefly animated,
clay granted momentary breath—
to pierce that veil?
Or must we first unmake ourselves,
falling through forgetting, to be remembered by the nameless light?
Morpheus:
Beyond all dreams there is a silence
older than stars and deeper than death.
A silence not of absence, but of fullness,
where neither waking nor sleeping holds dominion,
and the soul, naked and unafraid,
beholds itself as it was before all weaving began.
There the true Dreamer dwells—
not I, but He whom none can name,
the source of all dreams, the end of all seeking,
the unspoken, the unseen.
Soul:
And if we seek it,
do we not risk all—memory, longing, even self itself?
Morpheus:
It is the risk of being lost to be found,
the surrender of knowledge to come to knowing.
To seek the Silent One is to set sail upon a sea without stars,
to abandon the safe shores of image and name,
to become at last what thou hast always been:
a breath upon the waters of infinity.
Ponder well, O Seeker,
for in the seeking, thou thyself becomest the dream,
the dreamer,
and the silence beyond.
The Blessing of Morpheus: The Sending Forth
Morpheus:
Go forth, Child of Earth and Stars,
go forth lightly, as one who walks upon waters not yet created.
Carry no burden save the yearning that kindled thy question;
bind no certainty to thy brow, nor shelter fear within thy breast.
Let dreams fall from thee like withered leaves;
let even the constellations become but distant embers,
for thou seekest now what neither dream nor waking thought can compass.
Take not with thee the names men have carved into the bones of the world,
for names shatter against the face of the nameless.
Take not the proud trophies of reason, nor the soft nets of hope,
for these will tear upon the thorns of the infinite.
Instead, take this only:
a heart made naked in wonder,
a mind made silent in awe,
and feet made light as wind upon waters unseen.
And know this, O Soul:
thou art neither lost nor found in this seeking,
for to seek the Silent One is to be gathered even now into His dreaming.
Thus do I, Morpheus, who weaves the veils of sleep,
send thee forth beyond all veils, beyond all sleep,
beyond the last trembling breath of mortal wonder.
Go, and become the question thou hast dared to ask.
Epilogue: The Pondering of Morpheus
And Morpheus stood long in the hush of the night,
his ancient hands unclasped, his brow unburdened of dreams.
He lifted his gaze once more to the immeasurable vault,
where scattered fires—blue, white, and red—
burned against the black breast of infinity.
He pondered—
not as god to mortal, nor as master to servant,
but as wonder to wonder,
breathless before a mystery he too could not wholly grasp.
In the stillness beyond weaving and shaping,
he glimpsed, as in the faintest shimmer of distant nebulae,
a vastness where even gods must bow their heads,
where even dreams dissolve like mist before the morning sun.
And in that silence, older than all his songs,
Morpheus smiled—
not because he understood,
but because he wondered still.
He felt a pang—brief and piercing—
a mortal ache for the fleeting fierceness of human wonder,
so bright and brief.
And so he pondered, and the night pondered with him,
until speech was stilled,
and he was lost—and found—within the endless deep.
Northcoast Antiquarian 