Last night I woke to the smell of furnace gas.
I dreamt you’d asked Charlotte to marry you
and told me after we’d tied
to a cyprus stump at Lake Conway,
after the bait-man had filled his plastic tubes
with crickets, then shook them down in our basket,
his hands shaking. You simply said, I love her.
You simply said, She’s lovely, blonde, petite.
In reality, her hair’s auburn, she’s big-boned.
We cast out blue nylon. Three mallards
shook the gnats and mosquitoes loose from
mesquite leaves. When we oared away
you told me why the females are drab
—because they nest and need
camouflage. When I returned to bed, my own
wife warm beside me, I tried to dream you good
fortune, whatever is good, a woman blonde
as a sunfish, small-boned as a sparrow.