Today's poem is by Laura Budofsky Wisniewski

The Great Flood. 1927
       

Here at the bend,
Pond Brook has overrun its banks.

A man in a thin black tie and high black boots
slogs from shack to shack warning us to seek high ground.

And you with your fine wife, your clean sons, your house
of high calm from which you can look down

from Buckthorn Hill, you see us, the swamp
of our town, the roads tracked out like tears

to the farmlands, some by now deep under water,
livestock bawling, drowning in rain,

rain that kills the air, leaving only itself,
more and more of itself.

I can smell your skin on the good quilt, feel
your baby swim hard in me

as if there were a river
that led all the way to the sea.

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Copyright © 2024 Laura Budofsky Wisniewski All rights reserved
from Sanctuary, Vermont
Orison Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission