Jennifer L Freed
Jennifer L Freed’s first collection, When Light Shifts (2022 finalist, Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize) explores the aftermath of her mother surviving a cerebral hemorrhage and the altered relationships that emerge in a family health crisis. Her poetry has been nominated Best of the Net, The Pushcart Prize, and the Orison Anthology. She teaches adult education programs from Massachusetts, USA. Please visit jfreed.weebly.com
Dream With Your Dreaming Inside It
This time, you’re paddling a blue canoe.
The sky is clear, the grass tall in the field
beyond our childhood home.
Soon we’ll go to Freddy’s farm to buy some corn
we’ll load inside your little boat
which now becomes a ship.
Grandpa’s barn is near, full of tools
you say you’ll use as you sail on.
And his berry bushes—raspberries,
red on our palms, our tongues, here
and here and here along the grassy path
down to the shore. You walking beside me now,
childhood summer on our skin,
skinned knees, salt air.
And then
we’re back inside the hospital, where you are slight
and gray and thin, where your eyes are huge
and calm, where you are fifty-six
and cannot catch your breath.
You’re whispering, The portal…The ship…
Morphine drips.
You’ve closed your eyes.
You’re dreaming distant moons
and stars, otherworldly lives.
You say, Out there, I won’t need air.
Your wife and I, we say we’ll stay down here
for now, make sure your berries, tools, and corn
get loaded on your ship.
You say, Don’t worry. I know
you’ll follow. Everyone
will follow.
