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“It Was A Friday,” a Poem by Nora Hutton Shepard

by | Jan 27, 2022

How did the child end up
in the stream, his eyes
the flat blue of the sky,
water clear as breath
sliding over his cheeks,
over the stones cradling
his head?

His mother, at the kitchen window,
peels potatoes. She’s scrubbed
earth from the eyes, sluicing
the dirt down the drain.
And she’s talking on the phone,
the cord crimped, stretched far
as it might, her voice strung
to another state.

And even before she thinks

something’s wrong—

she leans over the sink
to scan the lawn, the woods,
and sees herself in another
dimension, pale and fractured,
her face transparent, hanging,
over the empty yard.

 

This poem first appeared in The Cortland Review

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