Jared Carter lives in Indiana. His fifth book, A Dance in the Street, is available from Wind Publications in Kentucky. His sixth, Darkened Rooms of Summer: New and Selected Poems, is forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press. Additional poems and stories may be found on his web site at www.jaredcarter.com.
Boleyn
Surely she knew. From that window
one still looked out
While her recession wound below
without a shout
Or murmur, calm and clear as on
a summer’s day.
As when, revealed at last, you turn
your level gaze
Unto the other. That knowing
stays forever –
What time’s imperious mowing
cannot sever.
Faceted
Then he brought out a molded tray
of velvet, dark
And smoothly brushed, from which a spray
composed of stark,
First-water diamonds, finely wrought
and polished, gave
Iridescence to the room. Fraught,
as though a cave
Of ice had come alive, the stones
had been set free
By myriad cuts that framed their own
simplicity.
Return
Onto that unremembered realm
beyond our birth
And individual death – that calm,
receptive earth
From which we rise, and will again
rejoin – let me
Be sifted, slowly, like a rain
that patiently
Restores each leaf, until the trees
and grass recall
Their ancient names. Such memories
will do for all.
Change
But even if I changed my life –
what then? And if
Another took my place, unlike
myself – not stiff
And cold, but warm and kind – who’d say
it mattered much?
An old indifference would betray
my every touch,
The same disguises form again.
Whoever knew
My other life would say, he’s been
to himself true.
Encounters
It has been long since animals
would speak to me
In dreams. There was a time their calls
were clear, and we
Came face to face – not to caress
but to exchange.
You too have lingered there, to bless
the rare, the strange,
The fathomless in sleep. The ghost
of their soft speech
That never was, is still almost
within your reach.
Mourning
Now where to turn? And how to leave
alone upon
The bier what we have come to grieve?
Some antiphon
Still haunts us, since such melodies
meant to control
Or fend off sorrow fail to seize
the moment. Whole,
His life was, while these syllables
will not outlast
That wilderness intractable
that holds him fast.
The Galway Review 