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We are guided by his movements
as though they were a language,
my palm beneath your palm
along the arc of your pregnant belly
as though my hand were the planchette
on a Ouija board.
There, you say.
Is that a foot shifting, an elbow, a knee?
Like noticing a flutter in a bay’s glassy water
and not knowing the cause:
seal, fish, school of alewives,
or like listening to the pattern of rain
on a roof, unable to tell
which drops are falling from the branches,
which from the open sky.
~~~

Poem copyright 2024 Sally Bliumis-Dunn
Sally Bliumis-Dunn’s books include Echolocation (MadHat Press, 2018).
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How little we know! And how much we love. Like this poem, for example.
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A marvel!
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Isn’t it, though?
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Wonderstuff of a poem. So beautifully merged with the similes.
A particular joy, was the luck of reading the final image of the raindrops, and then, a couple of hours later, reading a poem by Rose Mary Boehm called Year of the Blackwater Dragon, in which she uses the metaphor of raindrops as transparent boulders. It reminds of how poems can speak to each other and a reader (me) as parts in a larger harmony. In this case a liquid one. though the poems are about different wonders: the swimmer in the pool of new life inside the mother, or the rain outside, and how we find them both, strangely juxtaposed, in two poems from different poets in different circumstances. Lovely, both.
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Lovely comment. Thanks, Jim.
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So beautiful, Sally. Thank you Vox Populi!
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The ppoem is sweet ❤️🌹and subtle, not what I actually expected after seeing 🌱 the title in my inbox 📬, WHAT I JUST READ 📖 is an eye opener, something calming and down to earth 🌎, Sealing the whole day on a notion of prosperity…. 🥂
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Yes, a surprising poem. Thank you.
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Very fine stuff for this brand new poetry week.
Very fine!
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Thanks, Sean.
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So many movements have unseen causes we can only speculate about. I shall think about this poem often, especially when the bushes rustle or the rice plants undulate but there doesn’t seem to be any wind.
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