Things Are Good

Things Are Good
By Marie Trotter

Things are good. She and I don’t talk
anymore, but yesterday the baby lay
on my lap and pretended to swim,
waving wildly one little limb,
and left behind a bubble on my knee.

The trains are still running, they work
more often than not, and though my
wallet had run dry, the driver let me on,
my body began its monthly song,
thereupon a thankful wringing of the sheets.

Things are good. If I ask Jack, he sings,
or whispers, unexpectedly, the only words
I want to hear. I finished once again
the mystery I read for the first time
last year in fall. I’d forgotten about the flood

that ended it all. Bodies washed up
on the fen from the raging river
that broke the bridges and dams and filled the streets.
An act of God, that nature functioned as it should,
So, again I say – things are good.

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Marie Trotter
Poet & Theatre Critic

Photography by Marlow Amick