This week’s poem, Martin Steingesser’s “What We Do Not See,” offers us a glimpse of unexpected beauty in a frightening accident that befalls the speaker. I love this poem’s bright, sunlit imagery; the strange fracturing of the speaker’s world and time; and how the danger of its moment opens into a kind of beatific mystery.
Steingesser’s most recent book of poems is “Yellow Horses.” He served as Portland’s first poet laureate, from 2007 to 2009.
Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, Indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers, and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.
What We Do Not See
By Martin Steingesser
“The task of imagination is to imagine the real.”
— Robert Sardello
You believe in it, the light—sunlight, dazzling sun
over a field of wheat, or warming your hand like a glove.
What of the dark of the moon? What of the other side?
One morning I walk out of a breakfast café, the sun
winter low and bright brushing snowdrifts
rosy bronze. A few steps from the curb
and I’m down, cars swerving past, a woman screaming.
Was I dreaming? I don’t remember being airborne,
watching faces pass below, eyes following my flight.
“I thought he was a seagull,” the woman who hit me
swore in court weeks later. What I recall—time vanished,
car head-on in a sequence of still images, each bigger
than one before, as doubtful as that bird’s-eye view; that
and landing unbruised, seagulls wheeling overhead,
some passerby shouting “I saw you, saw you flying!”
Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “What We Do Not See,’” copyright 2018 by Martin Steingesser, reprinted from The Café Review Volume 29, Fall 2018 by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.
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