Aubade

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Crumpled pillows in a yellow hue — Photo by Cyan Chen on Unsplash

Sometimes you wake me from my dream 
with a low, trembling moan
that rises almost to a scream 
before I wake you from your own.

Then you describe it in detail, 
as if to make it come untrue— 
the smoke or silence or betrayal 
that just occurred to you.

This morning, though, you didn’t seem 
to want to recollect
even the contours of your dream, 
which was a kindness, I suspect.

Eric McHenry

is the author, most recently, of Odd Evening (Waywiser, 2016). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, the Times Literary Supplement, FIELD, and Yale Review. He teaches English at Washburn University and was the poet laureate of Kansas from 2015 to 2017.

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