CRASHING ALONE by Caroline N. Simpson

Lightning struck like severed veins
and threw him crashing alone.

He lay on a funeral mound
of pictures, forgotten board games.

Men murmured in the oak floor,
women through pipes around the room.

Voices widened cracks into gaps.

A breeze blew through; the plaster sank
exhausted, crushing his ghost house.

Source:

Harding, Paul. Tinkers. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2010. Print.

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Caroline N. Simpson is an English teacher, currently teaching English as a Second Language at a community college in Seattle, WA. She has taught English literature at international high schools in Turkey and Spain, and loves outdoor adventure, traveling, and learning about other cultures. Her poetry has been published in the Barcelona-based literary magazine, Barcelona Ink, and U.S. magazines, Third Wednesday, Ascent Aspirations, Children Churches & Daddies, and Bear Creek Haiku. In April 2013, she participated in the Found Poetry Review’s National Poetry Month Initiative, Pulitzer Remix, in which she was one of 85 poets responsible for publishing one found poem a day for the month of April from a Pulitzer-prize winning work of fiction: http://www.pulitzerremix.com/ Most recently, in August 2013, a collection of her poetry won Honorable Mention in Hot Street’s Emerging Writers Contest.