Poems by Pat Carrothers

You are as free as the sun
Is to shine,
Melting the frozen streams that run
Through this divine

Wilderness. Snow banks
Windblown and glistening
In the light give thanks
With icy plumes christening

One's face as a priest would sprinkle
Holy water on the faithful.
You are as free to mingle
Your dreams and grateful

Wishes as the trees are to leaf.
As free as the clouds are to drift
Over the sleeping snowcapped peaks
While dropping little gifts

Each one unique, each one a door
To peace, friends, safety, love.
You are as free to adore
The infinite gift of all you are above

All other desires. They come
Between you and your universal place
That spirit, cells, will, all wanted to become
As the gift to the earth and the race

That was you at conception.
You are as free as thought
Flowing from metaphor to connection,
Since it was you that life sought

To bring onto the world's stage
Over all other possible combinations
Of voice, eyes and smiles on the page
That is your body. Without any hesitations

You are a sun and a moon
Free to make your celestial tune.

Your words swirl and fall
Into the parade of valentines
Drifting from the trees

They call my eyes
To the sincerity of the clouds
To the honesty of the sparrows'
Arguing chatter

I understand that hunger
For importance and presence
For a place at the table
For a share of the sun

Your words guide my hands
Over the fragile defiance of a rose
Still blooming in the frost
Leading my blind fingers
Across its petal face
Reading its sweetness
Such sweetness with a touch
That tunes my ear
To the fanfare of the maples
A wondrous confetti of goodbyes
From a party no one wants to end

I understand that yearning
For connection and freedom

Your words are the rose
Opening my eyes
Opening my heart

Orion's great arrow disappears
Into western darkness
Invitations to a new day
Burn in the east
The wounded moon fades
Into someone else's dreams
Out walking at dawn in a new direction
I discover leaf covered steps
Leading up into empty space
Someone's hard work has followed them
Into nothingness
Standing on their top step
I knock on the door
To my own disappearance
In answer
The first bright rays of sunlight
Warm my face
The fallen leaves tumble and skip
Around my feet

12/31/03 PC

All morning I have watched
the sun and wind sweat
over the assembly line of spring

while the poker-faced trees
shuffled decks of green buds.
As the last patches of snow

take leave of the shadowed corners
I am finally learning to quiet
the humming of my teeth,

the rattle of fingers, enough
to hear the language of water
in a litany of forgiveness.

There was a time I couldn't
say a word, my throat
seized stiff as a blown engine.

At night my legs crackled
as if plugged into the wall socket
and I woke with the shock

in my stomach, carried it
to breakfast, felt it
cleat its way up

the shoulder blades and neck.
But I'd wade out into sunlight
and catch the bus to work.

Not even the blue wrapping of sky
or birds flying over red smoke,
not even a dog raising a leg on a bush

like a sad Fred Astaire
or the face of a boy like an apple
fallen in snow,

could lift me then, praying
simply to make it from where
the bus picked me up to the next stop.

To be an image trapped
in the mirror of a pond,
looking up while one's true eyes

and smile move off
leaving only shadow on dark water,
this is how it was.

Last night wandering again the maze
of sofa, chairs and table,
staring at the portraits

of my forbears hanging on the walls,
I could still hear the voice
of my Irish grandmother singing

some hymn of resurrection
on Easter Sunday in Lorain, Ohio.
It mingles now with the hiss

and gurgle of coffee brewing,
a faucet dripping on the morning's
china, a city groundskeeper

riding a quiet yellow mower in the park.
This is enough, this music
settling like gold dust

under the sluices of the day,
stirring into my coffee,
opening wings in my veins.

Originally published in The Indiana Review

I've shovelled the horse shit
out of the barn and spread

fresh straw. I've hung
red balloons from the rose

bushes and set the two dogs
on tiptoe. I've dusted

my collection of japanese
beetles, silenced the june bugs

with the cattle-prod. I've placed
white stones around the garden.

You will enjoy the garden
most; the gladiolas will reach

all the way to your black garter.

Originally published in The Cincinnati Poetry Review

Since the white maid's murder
I haven't been able to keep the days
straight. I stay up nights
listening, pick through the bruised fruit
of books, occasional lines blossom
in my ear: "Lilacs drifted
into my nostrils like small dirigibles."
That was good, calmed down the cheerleaders
in my stomach and the alarm clocks
ticking in my hands. Lately
I've taken to counting the shower tiles,
rearranging the Danish furniture,
moving from bathroom to bedroom to parlor
mirror in every shirt I own, anything
to keep my mind from the girl's
moaning upstairs. Why did she have to
run away with the hat man? At least
he could sing, not like this
poetry of leg cramps and dirty forks,
this music of tin cups. I wonder
if those lovers undress without knowing
the true spiritual feast of solitude.
If I could, I'd put the sofa in the oven,
such a disappointing blue.

A surf of white walls
breaking, tossing up lamps, beer cans,
shoes. There used to be ways of dumping
past lives. I never knew night air's hands
could slap as hard as mother, or slip
inside my shirt like a girl.
"But it must have something to do
with the Jupiter Effect," she said,
"all these killings." Still, the rain was nice.
The wrought iron flowed like a line
of trees. What was that to us?
The murmur of cafes, the wet, red brick,
the litter of streamers and bright ribbons
could not convince us the party
was over, merely moved
to other locations like a storm.

But everything has grown yellow
the way screen doors have lost
their magic. I can imagine a life
as ordered as the Kitchen Carousel, soft
as plush pink terry towels, then
the pipes start knocking, another neighbor
comes to ask money for the crippled
children. Why do I always suspect them
of wanting to form their own nation?

Originally published in The Mississippi Review

On Saturday mornings when I tend
my little garden of worries
I like to watch the birds feeding on the porch
as the day's light hurries

to establish a mood.
Gray or bright, I think of things
undone or yet to be,
but I have ceased my questioning.

Together we welcome the day.
My worries never diminish my pleasure
in the weather's changes or the birds' constancy.

They're a living truth I treasure
as age completes my measure
one hour at a time, one day.

Where I come from the flies
are big and lonely. Too fat

& lazy to fly. Friday nights
they ride into town, wearing

little snakeskin jackets
& fish-bone chains, on toads

they've trained. They collect
outside the bars with the loudest

music, dancing & whistling
at dogs. One night I watched

while ten or so tanked ones
jumped a chihuahua like it was some

pile of shit. Whooping & hollering,
eyes blazing like bloodshot

neon dimes, until the dog
just drops over, embarrassed

to death. They were sorry
& didn't mean any harm. Then

they all rode out, back
to the drowsy farms, quietly

not having won a single friend.

Originally published in The Mississippi Review

I
She sifts me through her fingers
with black dirt still under the nails
that scratched my stomach
like a lynx in a rabbit's sly mouth
while bees sail over our naked knees
in the tall grasses of indian summer
whoa nelly! I don't want to burn up
like a star falling over
Jackson Hole.

II
Moving up and up
through stands of spruce
and boulder fields spread out
like spilled sugar
of a certain magnitude
she is a purling ribbon of water,
the syllables of rock and water.

III
At this aluminum altitude
the stones hum like the bows
of violinists and
standing alone on the thin summit
her hips are the measure
of these mountains,
her skin the measure of these clouds,
whole weekends of first communion dresses
drifting past our heads.

Originally published in Mississippi Mud