Within Sight

by Lisa J. Ampleman

The air seems charged with waiting—
when I shuffle through the dark kitchen

and touch the light switch, my static hand calls up a blue spark.

At this hour, planes line up to fly over the highway and land,
small sets of lights in the sky, each turning over the patchwork fields

and thin ribbon of river till it’s time.

Earlier tonight, with that room between us,
each glance I got from you hit me

like the headlights of turning cars.

Tonight, when the snow-threatening sky holds
the orange light of the city and gives it back,

I get back into bed while you turn over in sleep—

the castaway look of you there.
You would wave any rescuing ship on.

Lisa Ampleman is the author of the chapbook I’ve Been Collecting This to Tell You, winner of the 2010 Wick Poetry Center chapbook competition. Recent work appears in New South; New Ohio Review; South Dakota Review; Lake Effect; Forklift, Ohio; Natural Bridge; and Santa Clara Review. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Cincinnati and winner of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg poetry prize.