G. Frink's

By Cathy Smith Bowers

For Sue Campbell and Candy Butler

One night, the darkest winter of my life,
my husband not three cycles dead, I
opened the kitchen door to a quiet knock

and there in the starless gloom
of my back porch, two women bearing
gifts. In Candy's outstretched hands

a pot of homemade soup, in Sue's,
fat jar of swollen pears embalmed
in liquid fire. When I reached

to fetch three tumblers down, the two began
to laugh, removed the offending vessels
from my startled hands and returned

them to their rightful place again. Sue
led me to the living room by the hearth
as Candy spun the gold corona

of its lid, drank deep and passed
the jar to Sue then on to me, the ghostly
triage of our lips leaving their own

soft crescents along the rim. Outside
no star had yet to show, no other
moon to light the snow that all day

long had kept me weeping close
to the sputtering flames. We drank
and passed the waning jar and drank

again until the glacier of my pain
began to break, a thousand icy floes
drifting down the river of my grief

and then we ate the soup.

• Everbearing by Pat Riviere-Seel.
• Use Your Inside Voice by Glenis Redmond.
• The Storm by Emöke Zsuzsánna B'Racz.

Back to Four poems from the North Carolina mountains