​POETRY  -  
          With the Theme of Dreams
"I hope to be in wave-shadow when it breaks over us."
                                   Photo by Weebly.com                                    

The Light in My Eyes
by Heather Saunders Estes

​​Sometimes, my daughter was with me.
We crouch behind a bulkhead or boulder.
I clutch her and hope to be in wave-shadow
when it breaks over us.
 
My menacing wave nightmares
were huge, dark, and recurring.
I saw waves in moving fog banks
or in dark hills on twilight commutes.
 
The decades of dreams revealed
I could dive into, under that wave--
let it flow over, past, through me,
finding breath in a pocket of air.
 
Last night, the wave was enormous.
The tsunami water roars,
flashes white and silver in noon-day sun
Beneath me I feel a sailboat,
 
polished brass and gleaming wood.
As if mounting a Dune sand-worm
I rise up the sparkling curve
to surf the knife-edge curl.
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​Heather Saunders Estes's debut book of poetry, Inner Sunset, was recently published by Blue Light Press and is available online. It celebrates the joy of life, the natural and human-made world, recognizing all must change. For her, poems are incantations to push back against the forces, human and inhuman, that turn our eyes away from the beauty of shivering aspen leaves, joy of whales breaching, and the compassion of hugs. Her second book, Cloudburst, was published in 2021 by Poetic Matrix Press. She lives in the Inner Sunset in San Francisco and is a member of the OLLI at SF State poetry group that has been meeting since 2016. You can see some of her work online at:   https://heathersaundersestes.com/ 
Other works in this issue:
Poetry:
​Almost Winter Solstice


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Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University​.​
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​Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to theVistas & Byways  ​volunteer staff.