Two tired children tucked in bed, motherlove whispered gently against their cheeks, light switches thrown, quilts tame on couches making lazy hound-shapes in the dark.
My feet are sure against the hardwood floor, here a dip due to age, here the corner where I keep my winter crochet and books, each creak an amen, affirmation, home.
Simple things: warm kitchen, mint toothpaste. A pilgrimage of homecoming. And this, my favorite, your face as I slide into bed, the way you lay down your book as though
no matter when I come, it is the end of a chapter, and a good stopping-place.
Colleen S. Harris is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee whose books of poetry include God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark, 2009), These Terrible Sacraments (Bellowing Ark, 2010; re-released by Doubleback Books, 2019), and The Kentucky Vein (Punkin House, 2011), and she co-edited Women Versed in Myth: Essays on Modern Women Poets (McFarland, 2016). Her poetry has appeared in Main Street Rag, Free Verse, Appalachian Heritage, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, 66: The Journal of Sonnet Studies, and Tipton Poetry Journal, among others.
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