After the Nor’easter
Every aftermath glistens:
the boxer up off the mat at the bout’s end
the cracked windshield a mosaic
the patient in recovery with a morphine glow.
Even the large limb torn from the great oak
that hangs against the powerline has a last gasper’s brilliance
though our lights been knocked out for days
and the tree’s prognosis questionable
which is how we live now
weak-kneed in the aftermath.
The fever breaks and heart backpedals to cruising speed
the house aglow in candlelight.
Soon daybreak appears in lavender and sequins
and we’re all big-eyed at the picture window
ready to dance with our discharge papers
fall over backwards and make angels in the snow.
……
This poem is from the chapbook Ways I’ve Known Water by Lisa Breger (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/ways-ive-known-water-by-lisa-breger/
Lisa Breger is an award-winning poet, educator, and canine massage therapist. She teaches poetry as a spiritual practice in many settings across the country including the Benet House Retreat Center for the Sisters of St. Benedict at St. Mary Monastery in Rock Island, Illinois. She is also the founder of the Wayland Poetry Garden, a community arts project funded by the Wayland Cultural Council. She has won many awards including the Grolier Poetry Prize, The Thomas Merton Award for Poetry of the Sacred, and was a runner- up for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize. Currently, her poems appear in Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, Parabola, Hunger Mountain, The Lavender Review, and the anthology Love is for All of Us: Poems of Tenderness and Belonging edited by Brad Peacock and James Crews.
The Paddock Review 