It doesn’t matter how the dream comes,
just that it comes, and it always does.
Poverty, heartbreak, or abuse might defer it,
but it still finds a way to slip inside you and begin its song.
Sometimes it first appears when you’re a little girl,
maybe five or six years old.
You see a bird, a tiny bold bird,
flitting from branch to branch
among leaves of gold
and know it is you,
ready to fly to the highest point
in the sky and disappear.
Perhaps the dream finds you at school-
floats just outside the classroom window,
just beyond the teacher’s glance-
a ripple of rainbow light,
an impatient kite,
yes, that’s you too!
Sometimes, the dream doesn’t settle
in your heart until you’re older,
maybe in your thirties.
It’s the whisper, the yearning
you can’t quite put your finger on,
but it’s there.
It calls to you late at night
after you’ve put the children to bed,
or arrived home exhausted from work.
It knows you better than any lover,
and you may find that over time,
you will spend many hours alone
without family or friends
just to embrace it.
What always matters is that you
follow this dream-
follow it like a river tumbling
passionately to the sea.
Breathe it in as if it is your last breath,
your only hope.
Feed it!
Dance with it!
Inhale it like the sweetest rose.
And when you finally become your dream,
fill your lungs with it-
belt it out to the world!
Let all those who have yet to dream
hear your raucous song,
and look, ah yes, look-
for that tiny bold bird upon the branch.

Johanna Ely is Benicia’s current poet laureate

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