“The Dream I Dreamed”
Acrylic on Canvas by Peter Baehr. This rendering of Anne Hathaway as Fantine was completed for the Les Miserables fan art page. You can follow artist Peter Baehr on Instagram at instagram.com/theillustratedlife and at http://peterbaehr.wix.com/artwork.
Walking through the orchard of a thumpy wooden house
Tasting the grapes, remembering the flowers,
Because now there is peace, here, now, there is life.
And these are the final, beautiful hours.
We huddle in silence, try to feel safe
nestled in a cloud of rising prayer, we wait.
Staving off fear while the trees are twisting
The quivering earth giving way to their weight.
They wobble and crash into the earth.
The water is rising. The house has gone dark.
Feeling helpless and safe all at once,
Encaged in a prison of branches and bark.
Sifting through memories lost in the sludge
reality shatters my safe little dome.
I just want to go back, I just want to feel safe.
But I can’t. Look around. This is it. I am home.
I want to wail but I can’t even breathe.
The walls that once embraced me now filthy and bare.
The one place I felt safe, now infested and rank,
now trapping me, trapping out the light and air.
A life’s worth of memories, all the pictures
melted in their frames,
the dawn of today was the end of a life
I thought would never change.
Is it all so fragile, all so delicate,
to perish at water’s soft caress?
Could a wave washed over the sum of my life
reduce it all to worthlessness?
The treasures we kept under lock and key,
now lie piled out on the curb.
All that caution, all that care,
What a waste. How absurd.
Still there is someone strong beside me,
As I dig out my house from the bottom of the lake,
There is someone strong shovelling beside me.
When I uncover more than I can take.
One day the flowers will come back,
The waves retreat to shore,
And I’ve held out my empty glass
and asked, unafraid, for more,
I’ll know that I have survived, withstood, endured.
And harbor strength within.
My house is gone, my home, untouched.
And I will never be afraid again.
—
Stardust on Piano. Recorded this afternoon, far from perfect. Learning to use my iPod to record. Sounds highly compressed in the upload, but you get the idea.
As the wellspring of art is the fountain of love
So is love unrequited it’s deadliest foe.
The rupture of heart the destruction of more
Than the hands of the love-laden potter can throw.
Or the painter inspired by romantic fancy
To lavish his canvas with hue
Will find that his heart and his brushes will harden
The instant the romance is through.
And the ivories fall silent or drone into night
When the hands that carressed them are spurned,
And the pen with it’s sonnets so quickly runs dry
when the fruit of its labours are burned.
If you found any beauty in a tune gone wrong, then I’m glad you caught the echo and not the whole song. Faithful is the friend who will listen through the pain, let the bad notes fall away and the resonance remain. A song is a gift you send into the dark The portion of performance least deserving of remark. The applause that follows is the most exciting part, For it means the tune reverberates within another’s heart.
Shall I with fevered palm and pulsing vein Where confidence prevailed as long as light Now before the void of ignorance refrain The moment it deserts me to the night? My noble faith decamped to dark recesses My soul possessed with crip’ling consternation Stripped of what intention it possesses, By nothing more than poor illumination? Shall I who stood where devastation coiled Its tentacles of obvious deception See my fine resolve and purpose spoiled By failure’s ever darkening inception? I’ve not endured the wiles of Satan’s harbor Nor taken hold of Heaven’s saving grace To be seduced by fear’s entrancing ardor To be removed by mystery’s vacant face. ‘Tis Darkness that should fear the great unknowing For in the face of Doubt my faith I fling. Hear this, O Void, and tremble at my glowing. Uncertainty shall fear the Light I bring.
