A native of Syracuse, New York, and a graduate of Syracuse University, Karen DeGroot Carter lives in Denver, Colorado. Her novel, One Sister’s Song, was published by Pearl Street Publishing of Denver; her short stories and poetry have appeared in various literary journals; and her nonfiction has appeared in Publishers Weekly, other print publications, and her Medium.com column on fun (to her, at least) “word-nerd” topics such as grammar.
Inconceivable Child
Elusive,
determined to arrive
in your own time,
if ever I were to bear you
in this high land
of thin air
and altitudes
posted at town limits,
of skyward steam drifts
after occasional rains,
of mountains
sober
in concentrated judgment,
I’d turn on the range
to carry you east
and north to the lakes,
where waves of wooded hills
would welcome you,
enveloping us both
in a shifting seasonal frame,
inviting you,
in a wide, bright moment,
into the world
I once claimed.
Until then,
absent of your promise,
I bide my time
certain
if I ever I hold you,
unable to comprehend
your helpless perfection,
our nameless fates,
my own furious joy,
I’ll want for nothing.
Then, equally determined,
I’ll introduce you
to your highland home
of hopeful skies,
to the converged pasts
that buoy you,
sustaining us both
in a shifting familial frame,
inviting you,
in a wide, bright moment,
into the world
you have claimed.
An earlier version of this poem was published in the Winter 2002-2003 issue of Wazee: New Independent Writing online literary journal.
Lauren’s Poem
When I hold my daughter,
and she rests her head
in the crook between
the round of my jaw
and the curve of my shoulder,
and her brown baby curls
brush against my face,
and the weight and wonder of her
fill my lap, my arms,
my heart with awe,
I ache to memorize the moment,
its every sensation,
to absorb all she is,
to hold close her reassurances
of what’s good
and right
and real
in this world.
To My Recently Widowed Friend
I may never tell you about the swifts
ribboned across the sky
that afternoon you told me
you’d returned to where
you’d found him. For a while
I’d watched them dart and weave
on the ebb and flow of a warming wind,
their sudden shifts,
one’s abrupt reversal.
They vanished as though
ghosts as my gaze shifted,
my deck umbrella’s flutter
a testament to my lazy
take on everything that day,
my attempt to hold on to
summer’s ease despite shadows
already lengthening,
hints of what’s to come.
For those moments before I knew
what you’d faced alone,
reminded of what you’d seen,
I focused on what was in front of me,
willing myself to etch a memory
of an everyday that for you
was anything but.
The rock of evergreens,
flashes of leaves reversed,
rustles of comfort
that console and fulfill
when I’m not even watching.
And just as suddenly the swifts
reappeared, this time joined
by a goldfinch pair that darted
from a swaying spruce,
etched wings evident
even in flight.
* For The Galway Review 12 – In Print – April 2024
The Galway Review 