“Flash of guilt or sorrow though the glass is smooth …”
Our “Small Things, Partial Cures” theme offers a second poem by Ellen Stone. You can download a full-size broadside by clicking and dragging the formatted version below — or scroll down to read in plain format.
This poem is also on Medium, in slightly different format.
Flask
by Ellen Stone
Flash of guilt
or sorrow though
the glass is smooth,
fits in the hand
like a flat rock
from the lake shore.
Now past middle age
what it means
to come home wanting
to wash the day off
like a stream over wet
moss rock, that shock.
Reminder that once
you were young, wished
you were older & pretended.
Kept beer in the culvert
at the end of the dirt road.
Commiserated together late
nights having sneaked out
of the house after parents
shut off the light. Love
you wished was yours,
sadness you threw off
like an old familiar jacket.
Now the house empty,
your own children gone,
you understand why
in the fragile twilight
you could take a flask
to the garden, sipping
a deepness that feels
like heat + spring +
wishing somehow
to go back. What were
your parents like, would
you love them, have a drink
together? Sitting on the
porch in the rain?
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Ellen Stone’s recent poems have appeared in Passages North, The Collagist, The Citron Review, The Museum of Americana, and Fifth Wednesday.
She is the author of a collection, The Solid Living World.
True stories, honestly.
