2026 Program Guide | Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

56 CABRILLO FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC 2026 Once upon a dream the well was nearly full. It brimmed in a silvery arc, water keen to offer up its clean resilience and cool solicitude. Once, when we looked up, the sky’s starry ladle dipped down to guide us, we took off singing for the mountaintop. Once upon a midnight we cast sorrow to the winds, strung up Hope as our fiery banner. We’d been traveling long before History thought enough of us to notice. We knew there’d be no crystal stair, no fields of clover lining the path— yet we pressed on, arms linked toward that gleaming horizon; we set the very air to ringing. Once upon a nation, sitting became the doing. We walked to work in Montgomery, sat down for lunch in Greensboro and Rock Hill; sent our children to school through a gauntlet of jeers, marched from Selma for miles into tear gas and billy clubs, arms linked, still singing— JOURNEYING SONG RITA DOVE Where did we stumble? When did we let the banner fall? Once upon a bedtime story, we hung on every word until the ball was found, the pup reunited with its boy. You’ve come this far, the stars murmur, and lived to tell the tale. Every mountain needs its dreamer. Whispers the well, Remember: Water deep is water sweet. (Copyright © 2026 by Rita Dove. All rights reserved. Printed by permission of author.)