Sweet Five

by Sarah White

Five o’clock
on a winter morning.
Half asleep
alone.

Five-year-old
Owen
at the door.

Bad dream,
Mom.
 
I mumble—
Crawl in …
It’s warm.

At dawn
he wakes,
stretches,
looks around,
remembers.
This
 is really living,
he exclaims.

 
Sarah White: Author of Cleopatra Haunts the Hudson (Spuyten Duyvil, 2007) and Alice Ages and Ages (BlazeVox, 2010), she is working on a collection of linked poems inspired by Dante’s Purgatorio.