Hoping That With Sleep

the waters will flow through the gutters with ease
without you having to interfere

hydrodynamics, you’ve said
and the clicks of the emails coming, will silence themselves

at least for a time, your head so heavy
maybe you can heal, hard as it can be, through the years

and you, lying so still, giving very little
while the rain pours down

so much pressure passing through the leaves and the gunk
through one small channel

or somehow going around all of it
I can’t imagine how that would look

we’ve crossed that line
all of the water’s pressure

moving through
it flows, is cleansing

the pounding on the roof
all of the information is gone now

so lost in everything
and I’m hoping

Poetry by Margaret McGowan
First published in Qu, Issue 03, Winter 2015

 

Margaret McGowan has a degree in English Education from UAlbany in New York State. She is the self-published author of Ancestors and Other Poems (2021). Margaret was a finalist in the 2022 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Contest and received an Honorable Mention in the Hudson Valley Writers Guild Poetry Contest 2019. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Hobart Pulp, The Raven Review, The Sunlight Press, Eunoia Review, Ghost City Review, Bare Hill Review, and elsewhere.