Dryad; Awakening
Shagbark Hickory
Forever non-finito, glimpsed
at best in a supple torso
that seems, out of the corner of
my eye, to shimmy in the wind,
in the sun, in the moonlight. But of course,
as soon as I turn toward the tree trunk
to confirm such, there is nothing
but a morbid stillness. Its flaring
bark seems always about to be
shed. At dawn, it seems to turn
away, as if wanting just a few
minutes more sleep, to root a bit
deeper into a recurring dream
of budded branches leafing, of a green
canopy luxuriating
beneath the noon sun on a day
that is the longest day. Instead,
shorn of all things green save its wood,
it spends this late December day
watching its shadow tick through the hours.
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.