Refrigerator on the Freeway

Traffic report, Morning Edition, NPR
January 2020

All the scattered calamities we leave
behind, those migrations leaving their trail

of chaos, saltwater intrusion in Louisiana
marshes, ice-free winters in the Bering Sea

another spring of beeless 
trees, the heave of a king tide over

washed-out walks, but who can slake
that thirst raking through each of us.

Someone is waiting for their refrigerator.
Wandering and unplugged, we’re left 

to find a new route home
like that Atlantic gannet off the coast

of San Francisco who may
or may not remake its world. To you

still searching for your appliance 
it will arrive soon 

humming, latched, so you 
can believe in repair.

Author of the article

Dorothy Wall is author of Identity Theory: Poems (Blue Light Press) and the essay collection, Encounters with the Invisible: Unseen Illness, Controversy, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Southern Methodist University Press). Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Witness, Bellevue Literary Review and Dos Passos Review. She has taught poetry and fiction writing at San Francisco State University and U.C. Berkeley, Extension and works as a writing coach.