Michele Bombardier
Michele Bombardier lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, where she served as the inaugural Poet Laureate and has been designated an Island Treasure for her outstanding contributions to the arts and community. Don’t Ask Me How I Know, her second fulllength collection, was the first runner-up for the Sally Albiso Award. She is also the author of What We Do, a Washington State Book Award finalist. Bombardier is the 2024 winner of the NORward Prize, and the founder of Fishplate Poetry. Recent work has appeared in JAMA, Bellevue Literary Review, Atlanta Review, New Ohio Review, and others.
Before returning to graduate school for her MFA in poetry at Pacific University, she worked as a neurological specialist speech-language pathologist in hospitals and private practice. She is certified in narrative medicine, leading workshops and retreats for clinicians and those affected by illness or disability.
She is a fellow of Hedgebrook, Mineral School, Edith Wharton House, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, and Centrum and has received support from Humanities Washington.
Visit her online at MicheleBombardier.com
Don't Ask Me How I Know: $19.99
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Poem from Don't Ask Me How I Know
What We Hold
The waft of peat and smoke of the tea arrives before I open my eyes, before I break through the skim-edge of sleep. I peer out across the bed, that wide country, to my husband offering a cup, a white begging bowl I take with both hands, and always, the first word, thanks. First one up makes the pot, our unspoken rule. I used to be the one to slip into the early dawn, bring tea dowsed with sugar and milk to each child, sit on the bed, wait for the empty cup. Now they rise early, bring steaming mugs to their partners, sit on edges of beds in some far dark. Each of us holding those few seconds before the clutch and grind of the day. And here my husband swings his bum knee straight-leg upward on the bed as he settles back into the pillows, his own cup in hand. We watch the cedars sway. The tea casts its scent of loam and wheat around the room. Scent of empty bird’s nest. Raked leaves. Pine. Ash.
