Flood Watch

At last it isn’t snow. Still, too wintry

to go back to sleeping in their unheated upstairs

quite yet. Up before daylight, shivering, she

builds the fire across the pelted room stoking

hardwood pallets he sawed before his operation

to see them through now the woodpile’s gone.

Flickers under the stove door cast a thin dawn.

Soon their breakfast water will boil and call

through their covers above the driving rain.

Winds within the stove and outside make one roar.

Sparks surround and entrance them with their own

old sounds. Through sashes to the east she watches

what she heard in the dark – day – breaking wide,

cold to the bone, and wetter than wet out.

Wild trees and bushes swim and thrash

all the way down the field over his mountain

of a shoulder, last of night silhouette, swelling

then sinking into the panes.

Pat Ranzoni lives in Bucksport. Her most recent collection of poetry is “Only Human” published by Sheltering Pines Press.

In coming editions of Monday’s Discovering section, UniVerse will offer a poem grown from the experience of Maine, by poets of the present and past. UniVerse editor Dana Wilde of the BDN staff holds a doctorate in literature and creative writing. He has taught, written and lectured internationally on poetry as a college professor and Fulbright scholar.