Hannah Silverstein

Weather

Lately I’ve been trying to solve a problem
with my heart,

how it clenches, sometimes,
as I walk up the street, how

sometimes it flares with anger, and
then the anger passes,

a freak storm so quick,
who would notice in this glare,

if not for the excess
draining down the gutter, to the

subterranean channels that flush out
into the Connecticut, where,

in the muck and shallows
above the hydroelectric dam, a minnow

filters oxygen through tender gills,
unaware of the

coil-necked shadow,
the needle beak

poised to strike.

Hannah Silverstein lives in Vermont, but her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Terroir Review, The Ekphrastic Review, SWWIM Every Day, and The New Guard.