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Suspended
There was a fold we slipped into in sleep,
a crease in the week's cloth, missed by machine,
so that the day opened unstamped by grief,
and we woke to sunlight buttering the bed,
birds' aural jet streams, and leaves as full
of themselves as they ever are. We climbed
the side of the day. Its scarlet tanager,
seldom seen, sang in a hornbeam, shone
like a bright button on tweed. We climbed
until we saw the bay's silk shimmering
and islands suspended in air, then slid
down the hours as the sky rumbled and grayed.
While rain laid blue irises to the ground,
we tucked between sheets and half slept, spine
to spine at the seam. Rain wet the sill, wind
blew the curtains in. And the sky ripped
and groaned as though something
were about to be torn out of the long afternoon.
- Elizabeth Tibbetts
Elizabeth Tibbetts received a Maine Arts
Commission Fellowship, and her book, In the Well
(2003), won the Bluestem Poetry Prize. She lives in
Hope, Maine.
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