I don't think of this poem as a dream poem
but I guess it sort of is.
It's a wish poem, which is kind of the same thing.
Begins with the cliche, which also kick
starts the first line of the poem.
"If wishes were horses there would be a ranch
called Night Sky or Sleepy Head.
And a bay with a white blaze called Sloop.
And another, a roan 17 hands high called Bottom Dollar.
And wouldn't they fly like flame licks before first light
when the wind kicks up and clouds are kites
cut loose in the dark.
There would be a river, some cool water
like a vein of silver dimpled with trout,
shivering beneath stars innumerable and faint
as faces forgotten by children drifting into a dreaming,
deep as a heart.
The river would be called Heart and there
would be a prairie called Endless, Shaking out
its rope of dusty miles burled with shadows, bunch
grass, sagebrush, and a shape in the distance like smoke
or something lost.
The shape would be Nameless and the horses, the roan
and the bay, with their lips stripped away from their teeth
like death masks and ears ironed flat
would stop, and nose the wind, and nicker their withers
trembling like spider lace, and the shape would nicker back."