05 August 2012

Believe.

Chatham, Sweetgrass, 2002


August Afternoon: Napping in a Cabin near Ennis, Montana

Seven different shades of green
well up and reach out
and wrap their slender arms
around my shoulders and thighs.
My friend Jim asks if I have a pencil.
I realize it's only a dream,
and I'm not obliged to write it down.
I don't want to wake up yet,
to leave the tendrils I'm loving.
A horse nickers in the deep summer grass,
and I'm willing to believe--
though he stamps his foot,
and I hear the swish of it through the window--
that he's grazing in the green of my dream.
Now I hear someone trying to start
a rusty old pump-wheel,
but it turns out to be sandhill cranes
yodeling extravagantly
from the bog beyond the river willows.
"Do you have a pencil," he asks.


- Dan Gerber

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