®

Today's poem is by Martha Kapos

The Flood

Silly even to think closing
the doors would do any good.
So when the water rose
between the tiles, we thought ok
let's put everything up on slightly
higher shelves, slip bricks under
the corners of the cooker, jack
up the legs of the table. It was then
the river grew large, began running
distractedly like a wounded dog
smelling sweetly of rain, rankly
of earth, poured over the threshold,
flooded the floor, tossing leaves,
a tennis ball of fluorescent green,
the muddled ruins of a coat,
lapped and sucked the furniture,
left foam in the closed drawers.
A pool formed in the dented
crown of a hat. The stuffed chairs became
oddly dark. We could hear it
breathing from the second floor,
a sound of dull concussion beating
quietly in an empty cupboard.

We slept close to it like a heart
at night, an eyelid covering an eye.
How did we know it would be day
inside the room and outside,
filling the corners, the sky and all
available space? Nor could we plan
the way the house would melt
and lost its form, ceilings floating
wide-open and apart, walls
sagging window-frames out of square,
nor how still the varied contents of
the house would lie in new
and strange positions looking up,
an ebb-tide pointing out a wreck;
nor afterwards, on the table,
how carefully the sun would pick
a few cups and spoons, mark
new shadows precisely on the cloth,
and speak their meticulous names.



Copyright © 2003 Martha Kapos All rights reserved
from My Nights in Cupid's Palace
Enitharmon Press / Dufour Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

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