Emerging Voices from the Wild
Madronna Holden
Our Dreaming Commons
In our dreams we share
the lizard’s country
of sun-warmed stone,
decide on the flowers
alongside the bees.
We are as beautiful
as the world is beautiful.
(And sometimes
as full of grief.)
We worry our cache into
sweet soil beside the squirrel
with her hopes for a peanut tree
in the dreamscape where
no wish is futile.
We rest with the mouse
in her well-punctuated
nest of tiny dreams—
prowl the bear’s lair
with dreams wandering
the whole distance
of winter.
We follow the map
where breath is water,
and the sky an invitation--
navigating the true north
of the dolphin, the flash
of the hummingbird.
Thus dreaming docks us
at its common port,
dissolving the daylight walls
between us—returning us
to the mother hum of earth
that brought us here--
lest we mistake ourselves
for separate when we wake.
Madronna Holden is a folklorist whose poetry has appeared in over two dozen journals in under three years. Including Cold Mountain Review, Bitter Oleander, About Place, Equinox Poetry and Prose-- and Verse Daily (chosen as poem of the day). Her chapbook, Goddess of Glass Mountains, was published by Finishing Line Press in fall of 2021.