​POETRY  -  
          With the Theme of Dreams
"Hush from the thick blanket of fog" 
                             Photo by Weebly.com                                    

Almost Winter Solstice
by Heather Saunders Estes

​​Hush from the thick blanket of fog
seeps through the bedroom curtains.
Moisture from trees like melting snow.
The room is still dark
as sleep begins to drift away.
It is quiet; then I hear again the rumble
and drive gears of snow plows.
 
Warm in the down comforter,
I snuggle in deeper, but sense
far away, a sleigh-bell?
Maybe the snow will be so deep
with the plows busy early.
I turn toward my warm husband.
The light at the window edges
is just graying, opaque from snowfall.
 
As I begin to surface from the sleep-ocean,
a garbage truck’s back-up beep
unsettles me in time.
I awaken in my single four poster,
the family dog asleep on the bearskin rug.
 
I hear the rattle and bang
of the iron hot water radiator,
my blue mittens, almost dry, nearby.
Arm around my pink stuffed pig
with the gingham snout.
 
Catching my breath, I am lost in place and time.
My mind runs through different bedrooms
searching the clues
of my mother’s Queen Anne chair,
the tall windows.
 
It is the right time of year, almost the solstice---
sixty years, eleven other bedrooms,
and a continent away.
My husband, still asleep, reaches for me.


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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:
​The Light in My Eyes


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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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