November Ready to Pounce

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

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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."