I go to bed with shutters open
watch the snow
swirling in streetlight
the sudden apparition
of a face
in my upstairs window
an Utamaro print
of a geisha combing her hair
hangs over my bed
reflected in dark glass
she seems to move
a hologram
outside in the storm
snow driving through her
streaming hair she floats
riding the wind
a lost ghost
from some Noh play
eerily beautiful
ukiyo-e
the floating world
where she once lived
where we all
briefly
appear
Barbara Ungar’s fifth book, Save Our Ship, won the Richard Snyder Memorial Prize from Ashland Poetry Press and was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2019. It won an IBPA Ben Franklin award and was a Distinguished Favorite of the IPA. A chapbook, EDGE (named for the EDGE lists of Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered species), has just arrived from Ethel Press. Prior books include Immortal Medusa, named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2015; Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life; and The Origin of the Milky Way, which won the Gival Prize and a silver Independent Publishers Book Award. A professor at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, she lives in Saratoga Springs. www.barbaraungar.net