Storm Hymn
       

One thin crack in the plastic sign
on the locked ward door

Winds its way through
Authorized Personnel Only

like a branch of the Hackensack River
where we used to play.

Dried mud thick on our shoes
split in so many places,

our mother's face when she said,

We just admitted your brother;
he told us his crystals were melting.

Waiting for the orderly to turn his key

I turn back to our winter childhood refuge
under the cellar stairs.

We were base camp
guardians of snow

charted drift and temperature
graphed hope for Sunday night storms.

Now gray clouds
and Thorazine doses increase,

he wanders the blizzard alone
no guide rope tied to the door,

unique as each stellar dendrite
no two of him alike.

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Copyright © 2018 Katherine DiBella Seluja All rights reserved
from Gather the Night
University of New Mexico Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission