When the Power Goes Out During a Spring Storm
“A day, if a day could feel, must feel like a bowl.” —Jane Hirshfield, “The Bowl”
The house is a corpse, its breath and hum gone.
I take a book and a sleeping bag to my bed.
Hail lashes the screens and piles like white rocks
while I read a poem about a bowl, remarkable hands
holding the bowl. I lie for almost an hour,
until the ceiling fan groans and starts to spin,
the room once again noisy with light. Maybe this day
feels not so much like a bowl holding a storm
but a scrap of muslin drinking all that seeps
from the small wounds I neglect to bandage,
hours stained with thawing raspberries, a swatted fly,
early pollen, and faint yellow fossils on glass.
Editor’s Note: This poem opens with a fantastic metaphor and the rest of the imagery is as vivid and useful as the first line as the poem leads the reader to knowledge.
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