MELODY LACINA


Damage

In bed you hear
the rare but familiar
storm outside your window.
This one more than rain,
the wind behind it
troubling, and you pull
away from each other
to listen. With a river
of space between you,
it can't be your heartbeats
that break up your sleep.
Besides, you don't recognize
the noise. Nothing you have
come throughthe ordinary
bliss and sorrowhas made
your hearts sound like this:
the rip, the grinding,
the wrench of a heavy body
reluctantly moved.
                             The roof.
Not shingle by shingle
but a steady awful
lifting, like a child
peeling back the scab of
a deep hurt not yet healed.
What can you do?
You lie still. Why rise
to damage in the dark?
Sooner or later morning
will crawl into your rooms
exposed by storm. Then
the salvage. How you reach for
each other across the damp books,
the flooded floors,
the glasses on the counter
waiting to be rinsed.

 

Poems by Melody Lacina:

Looking for Comet Hyakutake
Corn
Compass
Damage
On Seeing a Nude Self-Portrait of Imogen Cunningham
Birthday

Deer
Pine
Navels
Cooking
On the Telephone
What My Friend Says When She Gives Me a Persimmon

Coming Down Mount Etna
The Rock Above Cefalu
Heat
What I Believe In
Talking To God
After I Die

TIMES TEN: An Anthology of Northern California Poets