Magnolia Dreams

Here’s the first poem from my index card boxes for poems that start with the letter M:

magnolia dreams—

a busy signal

again and again

Wikipedia reminds us that magnolias are “official flowers and trees in various regions like Shanghai, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Korea, and Seoul, and are closely associated with the Southern United States.” If one is having “magnolia dreams,” perhaps one is yearning for one’s homeland or thinking of someone dear in a location associated with these intensely flowering plants. Perhaps one has a dream to reconnect or to stay connected. That desire is amplified by the repeated phone call I refer to, even if it’s unsuccessful. I hope the leap between the first line and the rest of the poem is sufficiently ambiguous to welcome multiple interpretations. You may have your own sense of what a “magnolia dream” might be. I wrote this poem on 21 April 2013 in Tulalip, Washington. It was one of the 151 poems I wrote that month for an anthology project, Off the Beaten Track: A Year in Haiku. This poem wasn’t accepted for that book, so from 2016 to 2020 I tried sending it to Moongarlic, then a Yuki Teikei Haiku Society anthology, and then Bones, without success. Kingfisher accepted the poem and published it in issue #2 in December of 2020. I am always grateful for every publication of my poems, which is part of what my selections in “Haiku from Index Cards” celebrate.

—22 May 2025 (previously unpublished)