When my neighbor naps in his yard,
a blue-eyed darner lights on his brow,
its lacy wings open; and jeweled body
a dream-pole pointing toward the sun.
A smile shapes the corners of his mouth
as my dream becomes his dream,
becomes our dream.
He loves sharing dreams in which
my wife is a cloudless sky echoing
with the wing-beats of wild geese,
or in which he is standing by a window
and watching her hang laundry,
her bare shoulders tan like an island girl
in a painting by Gauguin.
He doesn’t understand why a wren
is chasing my wife’s ring finger,
flitting from clothespin to clothespin;
but I know dreams are only dreams.
I forgive him.

Jeffrey Johannes, Port Edwards, won the 2012 Hal Grutzmacher poetry award, and co-edited the 2012 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar and the Winter 2019 Bramble with his wife Joan. He has been widely published in journals and anthologies including Modern Haiku, Rosebud and Nimrod.