​POETRY  -  
          With the Theme of Dreams
"I climb towards the sun's ascending."
                               Photo by Weebly.com                                    

Jacob's Ladder
by Karen Marker

​One afternoon I fall into a sleep
and dream
my old spiral bound journals,
all of them carefully chosen 
for the color of their covers--
pressed together
scribbled words about sisters,
parents, leaving home, giving birth,
the drive cross country, middle school
crushes—become a staircase
I climb towards the sun’s ascending.
At the top I reach
towards a room flooded with light,
filled with people painting and dancing.
Then I’m descending the decades,
my life spilling over the edges
of pages of cursive writing.
I’m radiant, aching,
as if I’ve seen angels.
Vertical Divider
Vertical Divider
​Karen Marker submits poems to Rattle’s Poets Respond (to the news) and reads this poetry on the open mic with RattleCast. This past May she was a featured reader for Rivertown Poets out of Petaluma. Karen was honored to win first place prize for an essay, “Ruth in the Redwoods,” in the 2021 Keats Soul Making contest and that one of her poems was chosen to be in the Kent State University Libraries Special Collections and Archives. Karen is also grateful that she had the opportunity to work with the Young Writers Program through Santa Cruz’s Cornerstone Project, and to work with so many talented poets through PandaPoets and through OLLI including Kathleen McClung, Diane Frank and Jannie Dresser.
Other works in this issue:
Poetry: 
​Epigenetic Memory
For Sam at Pharmaca

Vertical Divider

We Welcome Comments
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​.​
Vertical Divider
​Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to theVistas & Byways  ​volunteer staff.