Choose Lethe: Remember to Forget by Carolyn Clark

 

With sharp, careful focus, Carolyn Clark guides our gaze over the shoulder of a woman who stands in front of a mirror after a bath; she flicks her hand and “a thousand faces [are] born” from the drops that land on the misty mirror before her. An entire house is “mumbling with flowers,” a twig shakes off its burden of snow, and a girl takes thoughtful care her horse does not feel the cold sting of the bit against its tongue in the winter air. Clark takes ownership of her writing in the second poem, “An Introduction: I am a Writer,” and through her persistent and bold voice we learn to celebrate each drop of water on the mirror, each twig that snaps in attention to a prior state, each oat that makes its successful way into the horse’s soft mouth.

–Abby N. Lewis, author of Reticent

 

Word Scythe:  Wind River                                                                 

 

What is this dusty voice

kicked up from fallen leaves?

 

Fresh September

intrudes on our senses,

sharpens the word scythe

that ever follows fullness.

 

Corn not yet reaped

stands in dusky rows

rattling dry husks

while in the kitchen

famine-defying Penates,

crickets of all sizes,

sentinel the sink.

 

Images edge out

and fray,

old cut-offs

fringed in summer’s bleach,

still hot.

 

Autumnal sun

spicy as paprika

summons her aging children,

seeds that slough  off

steep mud banks where

shimmery cottonwoods

yield their shade

to spindly spores,

 

whose whitened dancers

foil to follow

the river wind round.

 

Hope is in the healing

 

Hope is in the healing,

 

the looking up

when the horse trips

going over the triple spread.

 

Remember what the Good Book says:

 

keep your chin up

and be grateful

for the forgiving ground,

 

the dark tumble of earth

that absorbs

the curl of our spines

as we roll

earthbound

in an indoor ring

 

where the ground

is not frozen

this winter,

 

and like memory,

keeps coming back

to me.