Denise Duhamel
The Danger Moments

Some days, some moments

shiver in extreme fragility.

A trembling brittleness

of oak and iron. Splinterings, glassy shatterings,

threaten.

Evaporations of granite.

These are the danger moments:

 

different from fear of what we do, have done,

may do. Different from apprehension

of mortality, the closing cadence

of lived phrases, a continuum.

 

These are outside the pattern.

 

You've hear the way infant and ancient sleepers

stop sometimes between

one breath and the next?

You know the terror

of watching them.

It's like that.

 

As if the world were a thought

God was thinking and then

not thinking. Divine attention

turned away. Will breath and though

resume?

              They do, for now.

 
Found In Volume , No. 05
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Denise Duhamel
About the Author

Denise Duhamel’s most recent book of poetry Blowout (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Ciricle Award and winner of a 2014 Paterson Poetry Prize.  Her other books include Ka-Ching! (Pittsburgh, 2009), Two and Two (Pittsburgh, 2005), and Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (Pittsburgh, 2001).  The guest editor for The Best American Poetry 2013, she is a professor at Florida International University in Miami.