Napping.

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