CAROLYN OLIVER
Watertown
April 2013
They let us out that evening after we watched
the long night inside, flinching
at any hint of spark, glint, flash, and after
we missed the first decent day of spring
while leaf-broken sun stippled our duplexes
and helicopters outhummed the breeze.
Still, when they gave the word to summon
us back to the world, we came:
we were a swarm chasing our new queen,
we were a spill of river through a staved-in dam,
we were parishioners without a priest to greet,
unleashed down the slope toward our guards.
Once only six o’clock headlights,
neighbors became mirrors, dazed at our return
to ordinary time, then dazzled, exuberant
as if this silver sliver of the day
were a kingdom, its riches equally bestowed
upon all us monarchs, the ones unchosen
by violence. I swear to you we glowed
with our good fortune. Even the babies
seemed stronger, seemed to need us less.
And it lasted, we lasted, didn’t we—
until the first car screamed past at seventy
summoning the crackle that came next.
They didn’t have to tell us. Together
we gave the sycamores and street lights our backs,
we let the night shutter over our absence,
we disappeared from each other again.
Previously published in 32 Poems
Carolyn Oliver (she/her) is the author of Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022), selected by Matthew Olzmann for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize. Carolyn’s poems appear in The Massachusetts Review, Indiana Review, Cincinnati Review, Radar Poetry, Shenandoah, Beloit Poetry Journal, 32 Poems, Southern Indiana Review, Cherry Tree, Plume, DIALOGIST, and elsewhere. Carolyn is the winner of the E. E. Cummings Prize from the NEPC, the Goldstein Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review, and the Writer’s Block Prize in Poetry. Carolyn lives in Massachusetts with her family. Online: carolynoliver.net.