Poem 8

It’s January as I write this … and the ‘baby’ is now 33 … but this poem always comes back to me on a humid day in the meandering first month of the year …

… I like how it conveys a physical sense of barometric pressure and release …

January

The fluorescent of lightning
spills over the hills
with no sound of thunder
                                              the baby
may sleep now
                           that the heat
is lifting off her limbs
and having been dunked
in my bath

all day we've moved as heavily
as fish
            against this stale current
putting down the phone I lay back
across books and clothes
and slept an hour
             now the weather shatters silently
along the ridge
                           electrocuting
the outlined houses

                                    in the new year
we begin again
                           a week's holiday
no wiser
but look how wholeheartedly
the baby's sleeping a finger
gripped in a fist
                            and after a long day's whining
all the kids from next door
are coming out
to play in the cool
                                flashlit night