Susan Meyers is the author of Keep and Give Away (University of South Carolina Press, 2006), winner of the SC Poetry Book Prize, the SIBA Book Award for Poetry, and the Brockman-Campbell Book Award. Her chapbook Lessons in Leaving received the Persephone Press Book Award (1998). Her work has also appeared in The Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, jubilat, and other journals, as well as Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. She lives in the rural community of Givhans, SC.
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Why Does Rain Cast This Longsome Spell?
My hummingbird’s perch, that highest twig,
has no leaves. Today, no bird.
I call the vacancy sorrow.
A door ajar:
should I question the necessity of doors?
Last night one dream warned me
of the other before I woke to a nimbus,
no words to speak of.
The mood has fallen,
is still falling. I don’t think low pressure
is an accurate term for this weather.
Once, my sister-in-law stood by the sink
while the ice cream melted
in its cardboard tub.
Now she insists she has no sister-in-law.
The first dream, like a fissure, had no door.
The second, no windows.