Less About Line Breaks, More About Life

Poets who come from nonwriting backgrounds often bring a freshness to the genre. Like preachers who were engineers or rock singers before they turned to ministry, they're more willing to stretch the parameters and break the rules sometimes, taking us places we might not otherwise have gone. Christine is one of those poets; she worked in the automotive industry before deciding to stay home and be a mama and then, ultimately, becoming a writer.

2010 Poetry Parade: Day 24

Five Thousand Times
by
Christine Rhein

If it’s true—you, me,
five thousand times more likely

to crash in a car than
in a plane—we should kiss

as we are kissing now,
outside the airport, in a downpour,

every bleary morning, every time
one of us grabs the keys,

kiss hard enough to register
the friction, the precise

tilt of our heads, hint of salt
on our lips, heat or thaw

of something nebulous,
edgeless, that we long to carry

in a pocket, glue to the underside
of skin, hear in a rustling

willow tree as it sways with all
our many-weathered kisses, tangles,

the fringe of every held breath
and this one-and-only gaze

in the rain, in the splatter
of car horns and thunder,

of little choice but for one of us
to head inside, the other to drive

away, and both to flash a last
halfhearted smile through

the windshield wipers’
And–Yet–And–Yet–And–Yet…

© by Christine Rhein.
First published in Scythe Literary Journal, Volume 1.
Used with the author’s permission.

See more about Christine here.