“A Moment of Rest,” oil on canvas, by Alois Boudry, before 1937.
weather things. We hold our tongues
when young women bemoan their first
gray hairs, we doze off to dream
mid-afternoons on worn, cushioned couches,
then lie with unclosed eyes through the deep holes
of night. There’s a haze that hovers above
dates, faces, places—when was the summer
of the beach house in Ocracoke? Which snow rose
over the sills? Memory no longer chirrs
like an eager bird easing into morning wings, sipping
on rain that drips from every rafter. Time stretches
like an accordion, stores lullabies, love songs
and funeral chords between its folds. We are
thirsty still, but drink from a wider bowl.
Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press, 2022) and the chapbook On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books, 2023). Her most recent award is the 2025 Miriam Chaikin Poetry Prize. Her poetry appears in Poetry South, Poetry East, River Heron Review, the anthology The Wonder of Small Things, and elsewhere. She teaches poetry workshops online and in person. https://www.joannedurham.com.
