Meghan Sterling
—
Clouds are a Mother
Everything softer in the rain. The steel
swaddled in clouds. The skin of the brick
cottoned, the sky swollen. I was up for hours
sick, my body in a rage, my body resisting
the web of sleep, pain like shards of glass
in my belly, and when I woke, the rainfall
was a comfort, the rain-streaked window
opening to a smaller world. The toy whirr
of cars below wading through oily puddles.
A pigeon swooping up to its nest in the coping,
its babies singing with hunger. The sky had come
closer, the clouds at eye level. I could feel them
on my face, they pressed their hands to my forehead,
they shushed me quiet with their mothering hum.
Meghan Sterling (she, her, hers) lives in Maine. Her work has been nominated for a number of Pushcarts and is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Meridian, Rhino Poetry, Nelle, Solstice, and many others. These Few Seeds (Terrapin Books, 2021) was an Eric Hoffer Grand Prize Finalist. Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions), Comfort the Mourners (Everybody Press) and View from a Borrowed Field (Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Book Prize) are all out in 2023. She is the Program Director at Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and lives in Maine. Read her work at meghansterling.com
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