Rain’s Painted Dreams 

by Nancy K. Jentsch

 
When rain polishes streets and walls 
to a shiny gray, pick a color you see 
from a window and spoil yourself— 
imagine its takeover. If it’s yellow 
you’ll sense a warmth that could light 
lamps and invite to an outdoor cup 
of tea or taunt sunflowers into  
igniting. Blue would find you tapping 
your toes in suede shoes, wishing  
for a crisp autumn sky where bluebirds 
kiss on the wing while seeking bliss 
in a nestbox. Choosing red would be 
like biting into fruitcake’s candied  
cherries, feeling the age-smooth facets 
of an heirloom ruby and spying 
plump honeysuckle berries before 
winter-hungry flocks land. And green’s 
coup would be like dining on lime 
Life Savers as you lay your head 
on grass’s willing pillow, canopied 
by wisteria’s dreamy vines. 


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Nancy K. Jentsch’s chapbook Authorized Visitors and the collaborative ekphrastic chapbook Frame and Mount the Sky, in which her poetry appears, were published in 2017. Her collection Between the Rows debuted in 2022. Since she began to write in 2008, her work has appeared in journals such as Amethyst Review, Crowstep Poetry Journal, Tiferet Journal, and Zingara Poetry Review. In 2020, she received an Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Retired after 37 years of teaching, she finds a bounty of inspiration in her family and her rural home. More information is available on her website: https://jentsch8.wixsite.com/my-site.