By: Dan Raphael
Given the weather
the long expired warranty
removing one shirt to find another
when i can’t read the bus’s destination
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Helicopters as small as mosquitoes
horizon just a mile away, river
feigning sleep but ready to uncoil
where fog rises and smoke descends
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A precautionary tumble, 3 glasses of water
before I go anywhere, rain no one else is feeling
a humid hum, melody refusing to repeat
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Sometime feel like a small but vaguely bordered
body of water, inlet and outlet sharing doorways
depth that can change from step to step, day to day,
what swims through, what’s been here a long time
but rarely manifests
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When intention is rescued by coincidence
expecting sky i get ceiling, a mix of redundancy
and slap dash, a door with hinges on both sides,
a window with a wall inches away, someone
pounding on the floor from a basement i don’t have
Dan Raphael's full-length collection Moving with Every was published June 1st by Flowstone Press. More recent poems appear in Caliban, Pangolin, Otoliths, Rabid Oak and Mad Swirl. Most Wednesdays dan writes and records a current events poem for the KBOO Evening News.
"I wrote this poem on November 3rd, about a week after returning from 10 days in Louisiana and Alabama. The weather in Portland had been warmish when I went south, was fairly warm and humid there, especially in New
Orleans, where I spent the most time. When I got back to Portland it was wintery, cold and windy--a shock to my system, which lead to this poem."