Relinquishment Poem by Judith Skillman

Mid-March, the black and white of winter goes on pouring
images upon the window- a surface for rivulets of down pour.

Those whose lives we tend to ravish come and go of their own accord.
The end, beginning, middle- all stays corseted in waters, pouring.

Who wondered the way of the wanderer, who else came before?
She likes to ask the questions that have no answers, in her shower when it pours.

And others too, in surgery, the salivary gland removed with its stone sores.
A father's curse, salt and pepper hair, tear-stained gouache upon which ink pours.

I too see outward, from my knothole the day appears to break, or,
better yet, rid itself of nightmare dangers. All spent in time for water to pour

as if this were the flood, again. Inside the whale a cold, tungsten core-
a bit of flailing to get away from. Then all's quiet. As on a front, one pores

over the pages of a book on suffering. And finds the usual cliches pouring
across lidded edges, as, from the a claw foot tub the overflowing pours.