I mined my journal, chock full of my relationship with nature, in nature. I wanted to distill the quality and the relationship lyrically, with a song – a sonnet – lyric and inviting, to capture an ongoing leitmotif of the recurring experience, in dream and by streams, of feeling a part of the natural world. I’d like to be a stream, a rock in a stream, the ongoing and the static of existence.
After gleaning phrases from my journal and responding to the photo, the sonnet began to form. I have since worked with rhythm and meter to capture more of a classic sonnet, without a set a rhyme scheme.
Spring Dreams
I am the dawn child of clear mountain streams
one with the smooth sheen of rocks and pebbles,
rings of waves eddy around curved boulders,
a kaleidoscopic light in snow fed
shallow flowing water, no color but
what is borrowed from the sky. New green leaves
create a mottled shade, sanctuary
for rainbow trout. I will not drown, spread out,
span the width from dirt bank to cool elbow
of sand for my bare toes on a hot day.
Can I be both, river and child, my heart
alive under growing clouds, threat of rain?
I hear the Rio Santa Barbara call,
years flow past, water cold on my bare calves.
Michelle Holland lives in Chimayó, New Mexico. Her poetry publications include “Event Horizon,” The Sound a Raven Makes, New Mexico Book Award for Poetry, Tres Chicas Press, and Chaos Theory, Sin Fronteras Press. Her books Circe at the Laundromat is forthcoming from Casa Urraca Press. Michelle is treasurer of New Mexico Literary Arts, and poet-in-residence at the Santa Fe Girls School.
The Zingara Project 