Writer's Block: Dreaming

The words don’t come.
I wish I could dip down, my pen a net,
And draw them up from below the surface
Like ready minnows, innocent
That I mean to capture them.
No. They slip away like real minnows,
Flitting away all together in one direction,
As far from me as they can get
Until they forget what sent them
Swimming, shimmering, away.

I draw up the memory
Of a dream I had the other night:
Two women stand together
In three-quarter profile,
Wearing silk taffeta evening dresses,
Antiques from some imagined clothes press,
The fabric black fading into greyish-green,
The ruffles flattened.
The two lean toward one another,
Their mouths half open
As if about to whisper a special confidence
To one another. I strain to overhear.
Nothing comes, of course,
Just the image of two women whispering
In someone else’s ball gowns.

The image disappears,
Dissolves, swims away,
Sleep-baited.
No one word catches
This feeling when the words don’t come.
Just these dream visions,
Sleep minnows.