Poem

Judith Harris

This is the hard part – 

patience for the intolerable —

like a funneling wind

shrieking right through window panes

while piece by piece, a shattered vase 

is meticulously glued back together,

crack upon crack.

Now, I contain the tap water,

I let the lily stalks

suck from the bottom, 

a vase in the shape of a woman

with lilies pending from her mouth –

pink and white petals opening

and withering in the same instant,

and the pages placed under the vase

for protection shriveling like crepe,

word by word, blurring into silence

in the shadow of blooms.

JUDITH HARRIS’ books include The Bad Secret and Atonement (LSU Press) Night Garden (Tiger Bark), a critical book Signifying Pain: Constructing and Healing the Self (SUNY Press) and The Poetry of Loss: Romantic and Contemporary Elegies (Routledge). Read more.

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“Poem” originally appeared in Night Garden from Tiger Bark Press.