Poem

I dreamed of making a painting like a lake
flecked with real leaves, unreal blue,
blue like a card of a children’s book but
it’s ridiculous, I can’t paint
at all, the surface of the painting traced
silver and gold lines with metallic ink.
An easel a room with sun, rounded
smooth canvas like pressboard. I’m dreaming
perhaps about my pregnancy, the baby straining
at the surface like the smooth round mouth of a fish.
Floating in decorated solid blue. So soon
imprinted in my mind, heavy and abstract,
coins stuck to its surface, seamless, without
a brush mark to flip its tail and dive again.