THE STEGER Prize For Poetry
If I Were to Write a Poem About the Future
by Kristin Preve
If I were to write a poem about the future
and I wanted it to be true, I'd go home and sit with my mother
in the kitchen, and the room would be full of afternoon.
We'd have coffee and she'd tell me about her own mother,
how she died because she drank and then she just stopped
getting out of bed, and I'd be quiet with the mystery of it .
I'd watch our hands on the table in the winter sun, wonder if
they were her hands. And then we'd walk the dog, light the stove,
cut vegetables, and the night would say nothing.
And if I wanted it to be true I'd remember my dreams, all of them.
The ones about falling, the one where my sister is running from
the house because she is afraid, and the one where I walk into a barn
and there are doves in the rafters, everywhere, and dust in the
morning light. I'd sit and I'd want to write it all into
something whole, sense the tomorrow that the saints heard like a roar,
like the sound of rushing waters. After the first line
I'd wait and I'd know it is coming to us in fire and stars and
also that it is here, rustling its wings over our heads, folding itself into
hands at the table.
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