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child, let’s listen to the thunder

Posted on 12.13.19 by Alison Cantrell

Poetry by Rebecca Smolen

see how the gold-green of dusk light
seeps between new-red rosebush leaves
and leans against wet screen outside your open window.

among them: incarnadine-pink buds,
bruised, spent blooms
and thorns on the stems of the bush
that will not hurt you tonight.

the green-grey of your eyes, of those clouds
threaten summer-lightning but,
it’s the thunder that frightens both of us most.
child, let us listen for it, learn from it.

it is the thunder we feel quake our pulse out of rhythm,
shake loose the cherry-knot of our stomach,                                                             panics to contort neck muscles into tight rosebuds.

though the bass of its accusing voice roars,
we shut our eyes to keep it out.
down the hall it rumbles like stamping feet
that we can feel vibrate through floorboards.
we cover our ears to hope it keeps walking.

child, as thorns herald excoriation,
thunder merely signifies a clash of antipodal air;
it hijacks a breath held in your burgundy lungs
but my marooned heart beats
strong enough for us both.


Rebecca Smolen is a writer based in Portland, transplanted from New Hampshire in 2014. She grew up on a dead-end road exploring drainage pipes and pond life. Now settled here with her family, she works as a veterinary technician. Rebecca is a true believer that once down in print, words are no longer for the writer, but instead are meant to support, heal, or console others. You can find her writing most recently in the Unchaste anthologies, Mutha Magazine, VoiceCatcher, and her first chapbook, Womanhood and Other Scars, published by PoetryBox.com.

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