Swimming Out of my Dreams
Inspired by a Lucille Lang Day poem
Deep sleep brings me back
to our family’s orchard.
Weightless, I lift off from Central Valley soil,
windmill through spring sky
above almond tree blooms.After landing, I breaststroke
across snow runoff canals,
then sun myself on broken concrete slabs,
sizzle and turn bronze
in one-hundred-degree heat.Pet dogs from the past resurrect,
wag their tails as we wander
along ditch banks bursting with lupine,
revisit fuzz-filled summer air,
sagging peach limbs relieved
of harvested orbs.Back at our fruit stand
built of wooden pallets
beside a rural highway
between Escalon and Modesto,
I peddle Dad’s striped Texas melons,
cantaloupes, wrinkled yellow casabas.All night I float through dioramas
of farm life in previous decades,
paddle toward sunrise
out of innocent dreams.November 2024