Deliverance

Each day
as the night falls
and I lay my head
on the lap of sleep to rest,
Someone sneaks in
through the backdoor
of my mind and
lights up myriad candles
of a bewildering dream.

Holding my hand
with an angelic softness,
It leads me on
a meandering grassy trail
across lush meadows
through the fields of flowers
past verdant woods and valleys
onto a dusty sun-baked path,
engulfed in a shimmering
haze of heat and dust,
to an abandoned stable
that sits silently and forlorn
amidst the windswept wasteland
under a searing midday sun.

There it makes me sit
on a sacrificial altar,
Puts on my head
a crown of thorns
and hands me
a burning cross.