coming home

Sister Lou Ella Hickman

August 2, 2026

sometimes during sleep

my dreammaker leads me 

back

home  

back to the house

a hundred acres of land . . .

pasture   windmill    barn

yet

there is also absence 

no people   no family

no cows with their cud or calf

no white face bull with his froth of forehead curls

not even willie our black angus

struggling to slip through a neighbor’s barbed wire fence

absence   perhaps that is their unseen question

under this longing called dreams

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS writings appear in numerous magazines and anthologies. Press 53 published her first book of poetry in 2015, entitled she: robed and wordless, and her second, Writing the Stars, on October 4, 2024. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and 2020. and a Best of the New in 2026.