The Yellow Bowl
If light pours like water
into the kitchen where I sway
with my tired children,
if the rug beneath us
is woven with tough flowers,
and the yellow bowl on the table
rests with the sweet heft
of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,
if my body curves over the babies,
and if I am singing,
then loneliness has lost its shape,
and this quiet is only quiet.
into the kitchen where I sway
with my tired children,
if the rug beneath us
is woven with tough flowers,
and the yellow bowl on the table
rests with the sweet heft
of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,
if my body curves over the babies,
and if I am singing,
then loneliness has lost its shape,
and this quiet is only quiet.
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Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Rachel Contreni Flynn, whose newest book, Tongue, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Reprinted from Haywire, Bright Hill Press, 2009, by permission of Rachel Contreni Flynn and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.