The rain falls like confederates, gray
and heavy. The rain falls until
the night is a lake and the bridge
is a gray halo crowning the river
in mid-morning mist. An angel comes
along the curve. She is the daughter
of rain. She is your granddaughter’s
twin, hair slicked to her face at the foot
of the bridge, her mother changing
a flat. There is no room to pass, no
time to consult neurons. Your tires
break off their affair with the road.
In the long rain, in the pause between
drops, your choice is child, concrete, or
river. All you can do is swerve.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 4.
Colleen S. Harris earned her MFA in Writing from Spalding University. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her poetry collections include The Light Becomes Us (Main Street Rag, 2025), Babylon Songs (First Bite Press, forthcoming 2026), These Terrible Sacraments (Bellowing Ark, 2010; Doubleback, 2019), The Kentucky Vein (Punkin House, 2011), God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark, 2009), and chapbooks That Reckless Sound and Some Assembly Required (Pork Belly Press, 2014).
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