Nina Lindsay

Dark

In the thick pitch of early winter morning
cold rain streams invisibly from sky to ground.
In such darkness, does it even matter
where it's going, whether in thick ropes or
fat drops, whether it touches this end
of town or the other, whether it is late or early,
whether laced with honey or poison,
just that it's with us—and the dreams
all huddled silently on the bed, spines
and feathers, anxieties and desires given
form but unseeable, uncountable—each of us
listening for something, all of us
here, listening to the rain.

Passage

The dream explains
my dream to me—

a four-legged fowl
with silken fur

tries to sell me
my greatest desire

in exchange for the smallest
I have in my pocket.

It is a coin
worn so smooth

by touch
I can't read it.

The dream stops
as I hand it over—

the dream and I both
gaze at it

both touching it—
it doesn't even gleam

in the ominous winter
sun of all my dreams,

it is so tarnished.

Nina Lindsay is the author of Today's Special Dish (Sixteen Rivers Press). Her poems have appeared in Bellingham Review, FENCE, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. contact