New Year
Last night something
tunneled through the elms.
But at sunrise,
I found just white light
biting my eyelids, salt
rubbed on a wound.
Batons of ice
fell from power lines,
soundless but still emphatic.
Then the rain
churned the snow to soap
scum, waxing cars with
winter’s lichen, patchy
in the strange
uneven fur of newborns.
And still, I was childless.
One cardinal
lodged on a branch:
a blood-drop
striking water
before the slow dispersion.
Dilruba Ahmed, “New Year” from Dhaka Dust. Copyright © 2011 by Dilruba Ahmed. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.
Source:
Dhaka Dust
(Graywolf Press, 2011)
