At the Field’s Edge
Dryad: Sentinel
I doze at the frontier of my life.
It takes a lack of wind to wake me
from the dream of myself. Fog keeps
closing in, wrapping me in ever
thicker layers. I have stood here
so long that I have sunk ankle deep
into the earth. I can no longer
wiggle my toes. My fingertips mark
the end of my reach. I need a gust
of wind to twist and turn. I seem
to drip tears. My dew drenched limbs, torso,
glisten. That rustling sound, my breathing.
Nick Conrad
Nick Conrad’s poems first appeared in the 70’s/ 80’s in journals such as Green House, The Cumberland Review, The Literary Review and the TLS, with more than 200 poems published since. His first book, Lake Erie Blues, Urban Farmhouse Press, appeared in 2020. His podcast for All Write in Sin City aired in 2021. Recent work has or will appear in Acumen, Blueline, Breakwater Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Cloudbank, Flying Island, Fourth River: Tributaries, Main Street Rag's anthology, North Coast Voices, North Dakota Quarterly, Orbis, Red Rock Review (issue 53), Stand, and Talking River Review.