Imagination Did Not Create the World

There's a lake down the street.
A porch swing hangs at the edge of it,
nudged by the heavy summer air,
towards the starry sheet of water
that holds all the drowned dreams.

Tangents of thoughts may have dreamt this place,
but they didn't coax the beams from the ground.
No, ideas of love didn't bring it to being,
nor was it the fantasy of future days
that made his hand fit with hers.
But it was something.

The timeless world of a room for two,
and here was their room,
with its ceiling of stars
and its walls of cattails, and pine trees,
and a solitary street at the back.
One street light in a fight with the moon
to be a part of the creation,
the culmination,
of the two hands being held,
and what was imagined to happen.

They created this moment perfectly,
and then it fell and shattered
into the world that was already there.
The towering trees,
the cicadas, the July night,
the breeze that carried summer's smell,
created the room that was theirs,
that was there.