Winter Dream with Garden
by Carolyne Wright

I

Always the sensation of new life
riding through forests with the windows
down, remote mansions flickering
like candles through the trees.
We surge with Christmasses.


II

A branch breaks off. Green veins
bleed into air. All the passers-by
in the garden pause, a sudden
frost of a stare. A late pear
lets go of its stem, its bruising
plump in turf muffled.
The scene turns over like a leaf
before it falls, sleepers
almost awakening. Their hearts—
stone gardens raked by stooped,
obedient men at dawn.


III

Traffic at a distance mimics geese, slow
wheeling around of the long flocks.
Pale green pries through our lids.
We turn under the heaped snow
of the blankets, searching again
in the back alleys of sleep
for wind that whistles thinner
as if through a shrinking reed.


Dreams recede, kettles ringing
at winter's borders, stones
over old ice that skip and startle
before they plunge. Our lids
fly up, alarmed. That's all. Morning
comes into focus on the wall.



Published in Greenwoman Magazine, Winter 2011-Spring 2012.

Reprinted in This Dream the World: New & Selected Poems (Lost Horse Press, 2017).

©2017 by Carolyne Wright.


 

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