Having Built for Ourselves a House That Does Not Leak

                                                                                                by Karen Friedland


in the pouring rain is the main thing—

having cobbled together
a bittersweet, New England
kind of a life,

amidst leaning gravestones
and miniscule old houses
with teacup-sized yards.

Years pass,
and you learn to survive the seasons,
the bitter coldness.

But oh, the nearness of the ocean
and the blueness of northern skies.

* * * * *

A nonprofit grant writer by day, Karen’s poems have been published in Nixes Mate Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, the Lily Poetry Review, Vox Populi and others. Her book of poems, Places That Are Gone, was published in 2019 by Nixes Mate Books, and she has a chapbook forthcoming in late 2020 from Cervena Barva Press. She lives in Boston with her husband, two cats and two dogs.