Glass Breaking In
My Hand

A poem by Thomas R. Smith

A trick of the eye, pure nervous response-
loud as a rifle-crack at close range,
the glass flies into broken chunks
of measuring cup on my bare palm . . .

I replace the heavier, unharmed rice
jar on the shelf, and, washing glass-dust
down the kitchen sink, find only two
thin cuts, the bleeding easily stanched.

How lucky, when any one of these
razor-sharp shards curving
menacingly on my skin all too clearly
could have sliced artery, vein, tendon . . .

I'll never solve the dual mystery
of what liberated these jagged fangs
from muzzled domesticity, nor what force
at the crucial instant stayed their strike.

Now I look at tableware differently,
and have stopped simply seeing through windows,
with new, as yet unfaded awareness of those
fires hidden inside the simplest household

objects, and the grace that keeps them
from spreading, burning down our lives.

Copyright Thomas R. Smith