Hold on to your dreams,
If you don't, before your very eyes
Life will evaporate like steam.
So they say, and
byway of faith, more than
anything else, I have to confess,
I latched onto and kept my dreams alive
despite the drudgery of life.
I am, so to speak, a child of God
my coming into this earth, I believe
is positive and must have something to do with good.
So I kept trudging on dream's road
But in the process and before I knew it
I turned frail and old
And lost my grip
And down the precipice alas, dream got dropped.
And I cried to the child down below the climbing rope
"Catch the slimy dream, if you can
that has gone slipped from my arm."
And the child stretched and managed
for dream to rest on his palm.
But I doubt he has time
To the very top of the promise land to climb.
The tensile strength of the genetic rope is fine –

The child in me looks all right -
It is the soil upon which the tree
Where the rope is tethered
That has become visibly tired and wary.
And I despair
It may cave in any hour.
Washing away the child and the dream

Down the dead valley stream.
Copyright Haileselassie Giramy
23/8/98