Coming around again...

6 March 2014: This poem came up again on the Poem of the Day podcast, just as I was pulling onto my street and then into my garage. It was instantly familiar to me and once again, felt like just what I needed to hear, just when I needed it. And sure enough, I had blogged about it before.

"Then too there is this"

Perfect poem for a winter evening and my life at the moment...

"Then too there is this"

J. Allyn Rosser

joy in the day's being done, however

clumsily, and in the ticked-off lists,

the packages nestling together,

no one home waiting for dinner, for

you, no one impatient for your touch

or kind words to salve what nightly

rises like heartburn, the ghost-lump feeling

that one is really as alone as one had feared.

One isn't, not really. Not really. Joy

to see over the strip mall darkening

right on schedule a neon-proof pink

sunset flaring like the roof of a cat's mouth,

cleanly ribbed, the clouds laddering up

and lit as if by a match struck somewhere

in the throat much deeper down.