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A MILLION SWEET DREAMS by Tammy Takahashi


A million sweet dreams


When did we learn
to hide our exuberance
and hold our passions in?
The world will not 
become more quiet
through our indifference.
The sun knows its way
without having to find it
and bestows life upon us
with ease and great strength.
When I look at the sun,
I see a million sweet dreams
swimming in a yellow sea
with the power to vibrate
themselves into the thread
of our momentary lives.
The garden that feeds us
maintains a whole realm of 
rich and verdant mystery.
The trees that line city streets
shorn for convenience
still stand, still guard 
our stories generations deep
with great vigilance, 
bearing the marks of their compassion
so that we may learn patience,
and new ways of learning.
The time is now – 
we need our communions,
our shared vision of hope,
and the world has never
stopped listening.
Let us seek guidance
from those who know
what it means to guide us,
and let us listen, with everything in us,
let us listen.


(This poem first appeared in Tammy's new book,  110 Days of Hope and Peace. Tammy will be donating half of the proceeds from the book to a beautiful organization committed to showing up for communities of color in unique and powerful ways, with a particular focus on Black women and girls, called The Loveland Foundation. All donations are welcome in exchange for the poetry collection via Paypal and e-Transfer here: Tammystone4444@gmail.com. Thank you!)


Tammy Stone Takahashi is a writer, poet, photographer and student of life. Her short stories and poems have been widely published and anthologized and she has worked on several anthologies as co-editor. Her published works include a book of photography, "Tag it! Toronto: A City's Imagination Revolution" (2009), and the poetry collections Formation: Along the Ganges and Back Again (2015), Little Poems for Big Seasons (2016) and Land, 2018. She is based in Canada and Japan, and can be found curled up with a good good, talking to trees or hand-sewing in her spare time. She invites you to see some of her recent photography here and to connect with her on her writer's pagetwitter and her blog, There’s No War in World, here. Her latest poetry collection emerged during the 2020 pandemic and state of civil unrest. It is titled 110 Days of Hope and Peace. 

*For submission guidelines, click here.*

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