“Any fool can get into an ocean
    but it takes a goddess to get out of one.” ~ Jack Spicer
A dream horse, or perhaps a crab
slept in crowded fields of light
Dream haystacks all around
and the dream wings of a nighthawk
flying into an eastern star.
In the distance, dream horses
stampeded over fields of winter wheat
under an ocean of sky.
Was that galaxy a vision of a Goddess?

The dream held a lavender melody
from a distant star –
the music becoming light,
and in a cottonwood tree
an owl chanted from the twisted
sculpture of a branch
that was still growing,

The blue notes of my dream
called to the owl
like a chime in a sky cathedral
as the Leonid meteors streaked across the sky.
Above the owl’s wings, the northern lights
hovered over hay fields,
changing colors.

Every word I wrote that night
brought us back to a passageway
where a stone tunnel leads through the coastal cliffs
to the ocean. Someone was playing a harp
and a thousand voices were chanting
the old rituals. In the sky,
we could see a dream horse,
the midnight muse, Pegasus flying.
All words have wings.

DIANE FRANK is author of eight books of poems, two novels, and a photo memoir of her 400 mile trek in the Nepal Himalayas. While Listening to the Enigma Variations: New and Selected Poems won the 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Award for Poetry. She is editor of Fog and Light: San Francisco through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here.  Diane plays cello in the Golden Gate Symphony and collaborated with Matt Arnerich to create an orchestral suite based on her poem, “Tree of Life.”