Poems by Claire Taylor
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Flood
by Claire Taylor
From Canary Spring 2021
Claire lives nestled between the Jones Falls River and Stony Run stream in Stone Hill, one of Baltimore's original mill villages located in the Jones Falls watershed.
A thistle grows where my bedroom used to be. Imagine me as a child,
spindly purple flower sprouting through my chest as I sleep. The living room
is gone. So too the spiral staircase painted red, purple, yellow, teal. The sun room
where I found the brown recluse. The deck with a plastic roof that sounded like a
snare drum whenever it rained. How deafening it must have been that day
when the rain never stopped and the river tore through the earth, reckless,
ignoring the turns and curves of its banks, lifting the neighbors’ house from its
foundation, sending it crashing into ours. Nothing remains but
the river, calm now, awaiting the next storm. The river and the Buddha.
Two feet of thick stone purchased from a garden store up the highway.
Eternally smiling, immovable as the seasons ebb and flow,
the world rages and fades. Someday all the shores will be
lost to rising water, rivers and oceans unbound.
Where will we go when nothing remains of
the place we called home?
© Claire Taylor
The Lilac Bush
by Claire Taylor
From Canary Spring 2021
We ripped out the lilac bush. It sat next to the shed that held the
water heater, the ancient boiler, the circuit breaker that popped
whenever we used that one outlet in the living room. We
demolished the shed to expand the house, and the
lilac bush went with it. The lilac bush that would be in
bloom right now if it were still here, but it isn’t. The lilac bush the
dog would be sleeping beneath, flowers branching out
above his head like purple sun rays beaming from an
auburn core, but the dog is gone now too. Gone even before
the lilac, though I still picture him daily, an apparition
moving through the house, including the new rooms
spaces he never inhabited
In winter, when the lilac would have been
barren, spindly, the new walls went up. The spot
where it once stood now looks like a place where
a lilac had never been, would
never grow. I told my husband I’d feel a bit
sad come spring, our first without
the lilac. I didn’t know by
spring the whole world would
be different, the lilac bush the least of
the things we have lost.
Previously published in POEMS FROM THE LOCKDOWN (Willowdown Books, 2020)
© Claire Taylor