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Dawn Carol Mahler
No matter where or how I step from bed, the planks protest. My first thought: I’m alive. Thanks. I’m afraid that some night bombs will pit the blackness: I’ll wake—if at all—to a flash like dawn, the way this morning a sudden brilliance hit the counter: food left out, unstacked dishes, trash. What comfort to pop the gas, plop down the kettle, slosh hot suds in the sink. It soothes me to turn to what people have done for centuries: to toil with fire. The same power that warms, burns. To be always aware of dying no matter how deeply meshed with life’s gear: even when I wash dishes, death’s beside me drying the way a sister would if she were here.
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"Aftermath" first appeared in Many Mountains Moving, Volume III, Number 2. The work appears here by permission of the author.
Original Graphic Image, "Firelake" © 1999 by Jim Davis-Rosenthal
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