A Riff on “The Impossible Dream”

by Ken Ireland For A.G. first published St Ignatius Day, 2010 revised December 17th, 2010 I don’t know if it’s possible but I’ll continue to dream it, juggling obscure or fine points when I have to to lend it a kind of reality. I’m just a guy trying to be real, glimpsing at men walking down the sidewalk and wondering. You showed me where you fit that flight of stairs with the return into a tight corner. Now you—anyone really—can climb up under the rafters and look out from where you opened the roof to the sun. I knew that hope wasn’t dead forever, even though I tried to murder it. But some kinds of hope are just virtuous dreaming. The carpenter hasn’t hammered the last nail— I heard his banging for the first time in many years when I thought he too had vanished. I’m just a guy dreaming back to last night, glimpsing at the men walking down the sidewalk, wondering what they dream of. What was it that disappeared before we noticed something missing? Was