April Showers
You forget sometimes until you don’t, the loss—
how we both knew without knowing we shared
rising alone at daybreak to rain as an act
of truth seeking a way to be less lonely.
Rather, to stand alone watching trees step
from formless to form by sound, birdsong shaping
sight’s sudden onslaught, is to make a cadence
where you and I are one constant, the world
outside windows another, and love a phrase
robins return to each spring across time
and space, the wet air an open wound stretched
into nightfall, and grief one note I’ve held
gingerly, hoping you might explain how death
severs and remakes us out of void’s light.
Lisa Higgs has published three chapbooks, most recently Earthen Bound (Red Bird). A recipient of a 2022 Minnesota State Arts Board grant, her poetry has been published in ZYZZYVA, Third Coast, Rhino, Sugar House Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among other publications. Her reviews and interviews can be found online at the Poetry Foundation, Kenyon Review, Adroit Journal, Full Stop, and Colorado Review. She currently serves as associate editor for RockPaperPoem.
