Midnight Daydreams

Dominique Renda and Blake Horsley's Midnight Daydreams invites the reader on a journey through breathtaking and heartfelt landscapes of lives both recognizable and unforeseen. The authors' candid poetic portraits offer compelling characters, and represent a deep slice of life, of crystallizing moments, realizations, and dreams lost and found.

Witty, heartbreaking, and inspiring, these poems affirm our humanity and rouse our spirit. Tales of a mother's feelings for her children, undying and impossible to suppress, a son's independent voice, a spry woman's inquisitive perspective on time, an exhausted man's effort to reclaim it, veterans of war and adjustments, explorations of values and redemption, and the insight and passion of a creative life.

Dominique Renda and Blake Horsley engage the reader in a conscious exploration of characters and poetic stories that bring us home.

Excerpt from "Seated," in Midnight Daydreams, by Dominique Renda:

"...'This is it,' you say to me,
and the rustic room falls away,
and the sounds cease to carry,
the patrons change to shadows,
and the light shines on truth,
the aged wood walls listen
while sweet molasses steam pulls back in,
and I am old, old in a moment,
framed in time and stuck to the leather bench
marking the day I sat down to say goodbye
to you.
And in quiet mind, I wonder.
How does time trade passion
for passage, and the journey
for a mere view?
The heavy doors open,
a couple enters to place their order,
a family exits with a bag of what's left.
'History creates expectation,'
you say to me, your voluntary mother
offering involuntary farewell,
'and expectation makes it so.'"

Editorial Reviews
Review
"Transportive poetry. A moving collection. Truth and wonder artistically expressed in each character's authentic voice."
-Neal Menschel, Poet, Photojournalist

"A certain shared perspective...each poem revealing both something about the subject as an individual and often as a part of a family, unique, yet related."
-Stephanie Newsom, Poet, Composer, Therapist

About the Authors
As poet, author, and fine art photographer, Dominique Renda's distinctive written and visual images capture the purity and presence of the human condition. A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and CTI international Leadership Program, Dominique has written creatively and professionally for more than two decades. As a photographer, Dominique has been a featured artist exhibited in San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. Midnight Daydreams is her third published book of poetry.

A young poet and filmmaker, this collection represents Blake Horsley's first published poetry. A lifelong collector of stories in all genres, Blake explores the intersection of truth in art. As a student, an observer, and raconteur, Blake creates narratives to provoke consideration and promote understanding.