Katherine Bode-Lang

SPRING MELT

They separate in March:the first of our friendsto decide on divorce.We tiptoe around the month;we’ve been fighting,too. Our house is anover-starched shirt.The month is dark with rain,the streets all slicklike sadness. We wait,rarely patient, for a thaw,for our hands to unknotinto hands again. Butour friends are an ice floebreaking apart in spring’sthick current. We pullthe muck of winterfrom the gutters, hopethe water runs clean again;nothing more than this:we hold onto each otherlike upturned boats—even if cold can neverreally go away, even ifwe might always feel the frostat the edges of our bodies.

—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007

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Katherine Bode-Lang: “I’m a recent MFA graduate from Penn State, and live in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, with my husband, Andrew, and our cat, Grace. When I’m not teaching or writing, I’m a volunteer book mender at the county library.”

Related* “Practice” by Andrew Bode-Lang * “City of Refuge” by Katherine Barrett Swett * “The Happy Meditator” by Katherine Huang