How does blue carpet at once muffle
and trumpet clock radio down the hallway
to which our bedrooms are rigged,
as boats to a dock? A scotched timbre
sweet with peat, the generational reveille
of Carl Kasell at work: Soviets admit
nuclear accident. Caterpillar in a spool bed
harvesting roof-rain, open your eyes—
silhouettes bob on up from the night
and put their tree clothes on. This family
is a suburb not yet gerrymandered
by cancer.
_ The oceanic whoosh
of Douglas fir branches is the sound
of God’s robes as he turns away from us.
Constance Hansen
Constance Hansen is Managing Editor of Poetry Northwest. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in: Pleiades, Rhino Poetry, West Branch, Image Journal, Harvard Review Online, Four Way Review, The Cortland Review, Epiphany, Vallum, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Seattle with her family.
