This week’s poem, Meg Stout’s “Aftermath,” shows us a season’s rushing cusp, as well as its effects on the living. I love this poem’s description of the onslaught of change, and how it ends in a startlingly intimate encounter with another creature.

Stout’s poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Cimarron Review, Guesthouse, North American Review, Zócalo Public Square and the Portland Press Herald. A graduate of the MFA program at Warren Wilson College, she lives in the Midcoast.

Aftermath

By Meg Stout

It rained so much
the spring was starless.
Nights lightless, tied
with strange song.
I wanted safety—
something washed out
in all that wet.
Pollen pooling
along gutters
eddied down
to meet the grass.
Not the same person
or series of persons
I was becoming. Arrested
chipmunks dove
for dry cover, cardinals shook
their drenched wings.
I held a nuthatch:
talons circling fingers
as she steadied
one side then the other
until her grip
transcended stunned.
She considered me,
mouth open.
I had
never seen
a bird’s tongue.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Aftermath” copyright © 2021 by Meg Stout, is reprinted from in North American Review. It appears by permission of the author.

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