Maggie Smith (1977 – ), the one who is not a famous British actress, is an American poet, freelance writer, and editor, who lives with her husband and two children in Bexley, Ohio. Her poetry collections include Lamp of the Body; Good Bones; The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, which won the 2012 Dorset Prize; and Disasterology.

To read Maggie Smith’s poem “Rain, New Year’s Eve” click:

Rain, New Year’s Eve

by Maggie Smith

The rain is a broken piano,
playing the same note over and over.

My five-year-old said that.
Already she knows loving the world

means loving the wobbles
you can’t shim, the creaks you can’t

oil silent—the jerry-rigged parts,
MacGyvered with twine and chewing gum.

Let me love the cold rain’s plinking.
Let me love the world the way I love

my young son, not only when
he cups my face in his sticky hands,

but when, roughhousing,
he accidentally splits my lip.

Let me love the world like a mother.
Let me be tender when it lets me down.

Let me listen to the rain’s one note
and hear a beginner’s song.

“Rain, New Year’s Eve” from Good Bones, © 2017 by Maggie Smith – Tupelo Press