Baths and Showers

     A water-hearth, this tub contains the wide
     Horizon, cut length of infinitude,
     The incandescent bulb my moon, as smooth and nude,
     Subordinated light that draws the tide.

     The sound rain makes when it thinks on the roof
     Attends me in the shower—I’m all one ear.
     From sieve to drain, I’m tumbled through, live proof
     That water speaks. Our first word is a tear.

     I aim to net one wordless thought per day,
     Found at that place before the rainfalls pour                            
     Down phrases, some lines lyric, some lines prose,                     
     To seize the silences all set to play                    
     Chords pitched so perfectly their echo goes     
     On swimming, always just about to reach the shore.

Amy Bagan‘s manuscript “Native to Now” was selected as a finalist for the Richard Wilbur Book Award 2021. Her poems appear in Measure, the Cortland Review, the Denver Quarterly, and Salmagundi, among other journals.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”