Seeing

by Sandra Kohler


Nightmare recedes, flushed out of my body
by morning's walk, moving on streets where
mist is not falling but present, fine thickening,
medium we breathe as if it were simply air.

A neighbor is trying to start his van, opening
the hood. A car rushes down Tonawanda,
going the wrong way. The man fussing with
a car talks to the man I hadn't seen, who's out

on the porch at 83. He's managed to get his
van started, he'll drive off soon. A trio of
birds flies down the street; they too are flying
the wrong way. What was the nightmare that

chilled me? Living again in a different state,
the past turned ugly, difficult, in ways it was
not – or was it?  What I cannot remember
exists inside my consciousness as strongly

as what I can. I hear and don't see a plane.
I feel and don't see my past.


* * * * *

Sandra Kohler’s third collection of poems, Improbable Music, (Word Press) appeared in May, 2011. Earlier collections are The Country of Women (Calyx, 1995) and The Ceremonies of Longing, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). Her poems have appeared in journals, including The New Republic, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, and many others over the past 45 years. In 2018, a poem of hers was chosen to be part of Jenny Holzer’s permanent installation at the new Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia.