Kate Bowers

Kate Bowers (she/her) is a a Pittsburgh based writer who has been published in Sheila-Na-Gig, Rue Scribe, and The Ekphrastic Review. Her work appears also in the anthology Pandemic Evolution: Poets Respond to the Art of Matthew Wolfe (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions).

Windshield

Do you see how the
Universe does the math, bringing
Every collision in your life

Back to the garage for repair,
Re-fendering it to a semblance
Of order, keeping you going,

Burnished once more?

Three hours now after your call the
Rain sweeps through these streets,
Close on the heels of the wind,

Car tires swishing over it like sea sound
Washing in and out of
Shore, rushing

Like air through lips to
Lungs, pushed out again from
The diaphragm, the heart keeping

Time.

High in my fourth-floor office of the
Board of Education I lie on
This orientalist’s carpet

Hoping my back will bend
Again to straight, while birds move
Past every window opened along

This corridor, windward, a column
Themselves, streaming.

The Greek Orthodox Church
Bells peal through for the funeral
Mass starting at 10 across from here

Street level.

The hour I went long ago for groceries with
My grandmother, sometimes earlier,
I in my twenties, she 76 or better and still driving

That old blue Buick with the
Virgin firmly on the dashboard, the
Radio eking out “rain this morning

Clearing later” as the wipers kept
On sighing, the program switching
Back, now a classical piece

Featuring a trumpet solo, not unlike
The piece you played in high school,
The piece I heard this morning

Even as the rain came through
Along the hallway there then, here
Now back into your heart and mine.

This time softer. This time fuller.

This time new.