In dream after dream
she flew over low-lying hills
with her unhampered body,
followed causeways, chaste
and alabaster, that led to
oceans and aprons of shore;
families romped on the sand,
the fathers youthful
and startling in white shorts,
shirts that fluttered like
bluebirds in flight, Panama
hats woven so fine they could
sail off to Mars. Not finding
her father among them,
she took a room on a hotel’s
top floor. From the balcony
she saw Venus, Sirius, Cygnus,
stars skimming the sky;
crossed a distance she had not
crossed before. Below,
the ocean had become a river
with banks as bare
and unsullied as snow.
A man named Christ
appeared. Go, he said,
your death is not near.
In other dreams, realtors
showed her shoreline houses
with fluted glass windows
where the waves lapped
and lapped at pebbles
and shells. All were places
her sister had also dreamed
while she was packing wings.
is the former director of the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and the US coalition that ended nuclear testing in Nevada, described in her memoir, Love Changes Things: Even in the World of Politics. She lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, where she and her husband teach meditation and lead workshops on love, gratitude, and living a spiritual life.
Caroline’s poetry has appeared in Mandala Journal, Schuylkill Valley Journal, The Broad River Review, Glassworks, Morning Glory, negative capability, and Cumberland Poetry Review, among others. Her poems are forthcoming in Silk Road, Licking River Review, and Pennsylvania English. She has won the Transitions Abroad international personal essay contest.