Your kidney is a dream-sac of old hurts: in stray electrolytes they find Grampa’s early death, Lucille’s, the checks Jimmy stole from you and his third DUI, not to mention the frost that took your cherry tree. Soon
you’ll sleep, Coleridge will tell you to which Imagination the morning mist belongs, from how many skies your surgeon borrowed blue, and whenache will ease to itch. The body lets go its battered wives, its dilapidated
preacher’s suits, praise be, but what good is hope in these terms? Here, Gran, it’s raining hard, streets starting to eddy at the edges. This morning we sit on the porch, kettle of a roof harkening, our neighbor boy out walking, shouts up at the porch,Look at me, I’m soppy wet!
Susanna Childress is the author of Jagged with Love (Univ. of Wisconsin Press), winner of the Brittingham Prize for Poetry.
Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.
