by Lesley Kimball

The rooms are emptier here
I wake tired from circling stone corridors

weary from the strain of listening for your voice
I didn’t expect your voice the first time I heard it

Didn’t expect that night, and the next,
all amber and flint saying, listen closely now.

I didn’t expect this specificity of loneliness:
North Church distantly chiming the hour

No matter how closely I listen,
no one is singing in the kitchen.

Lesley Kimball is the recipient of an award for the collaborative project “Borderlands” in the Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program’s “Voice and Vision” public art project.  The interactive poetry sculpture is permanently installed at the Portsmouth Public Library.  Her poem “Devotional” was featured on the Web site and widget for the NH Center for the Book during National Poetry Month 2009 and her poems have appeared in The Café Review, and the anthologies The Other Side of Sorrow and The Longest Day.   In Fall 2009 she will be featured on the New Hampshire Poet Laureate’s “Poets Showcase.”  Lesley lives and writes in Portsmouth NH with her husband-poet Adam and their pixie-daughter Amalia.  She emcees a ridiculously well-attended monthly poetry reading and loves watching poetry connect people and grow more poetry.