Flight 214
The news is still falling
in our kitchen
like invisible rain
as we eat the pink salmon,
the lettuce, the mashed potatoes.
Because now everything
glistens. The candles, the soft
folds of red napkins
each in its place,
as though it all were sacred—
the rain
must still be falling.
Not me, not anyone I know.
Earlier in the day, the terrible
news lifted too easily,
a cheap Mylar balloon
cut loose—a tinny flash.
Couldn’t even tell its color
against the sky.
Copyright @ 2014 by Sally Bliumis-Dunn. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on June 5, 2014.
“This poem is about how tragic events enter our lives, the initial impulse to distance ourselves from them, and then how they permeate and linger. It was particularly difficult to admit relief at knowing that all those I knew were safe. Gratitude for the ordinary becomes extraordinarily heightened in such circumstances.”
—Sally Bliumis-Dunn
Sally Bliumis-Dunn
Sally Bliumis-Dunn is the author of Second Skin (Wind Publications, 2010) and Talking Underwater (Wind Publications, 2007). She teaches at Manhattanville College and lives in Armonk, New York.