Today's poem is by Catherine Abbey Hodges

How It Goes
       

The river rose, rose some more,
and we learned floodplain.

As in: thank the fates there is one,
though we hadn't known it.

Thank all the stars above, those
that have gone out

and the ones still casting light
into a future we won't see.

What else don't we know? Almost
everything.

In time lapse images of the night sky,
the paths of the stars leave lit scars

on the torso of heaven. O let time
lapse. Then what?

The mice nesting in the piano—
the one bound for ruin in a meadow

under the arch of a dying oak
east of somewhere briefly famous—

let them dance on the strings,
make a new song.

Let the worm in the oak
dream as it chews.

Copyright © 2025 Catherine Abbey Hodges All rights reserved
from Empty Me Full
Gunpowder Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission