Willing.

Wyeth, Wind from the Sea, 1947

NAPPING IN A CABIN NEAR ENNIS, MONTANA

And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep. —Keats

In my dream
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 am 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 my dream.

Now I hear someone trying to start
a rusty old pump wheel:
sandhill cranes yodeling extravagantly
from the bog beyond the river willows.

“Do you have a pencil?” he asks.

Dan Gerber