A Quad of Golden Shovels
Internal Conversation at the beginning of Winter
Wet and beautiful I am thinking (“Forty Years” by Mary Oliver)
Overnight the garden has turned wet
after months without rain or cloud, and
I try to convince myself it is beautiful,
this beginning of winter. I want to believe that I
will be fine for the next five months, that I am
fine now, but that’s not what I’m thinking.
Before I understood
They looked like stones you find (“Mangoes” by Mary Oliver)
Boys were a mystery when I was sixteen. They
seemed alien, to be judged by how they looked,
handsome and distant, powerful like
gods with hearts hard as stones.
They could decide whether you
were important, whether you were a rare find.
In Prayer
Say something about pomegranates (“Safe Subjects” byYusef Komunyakaa)
No matter what incantations you may say
to God it’s hard to make them about something
of value. Even your sincerest petition seems to be about
the size of your bank account or just a bowl of pomegranates.
Lost on the Map
There is no center (“A Place: Fragments” by Margaret Atwood)
Even when you look, when you know you are there–
the neighborhood, the street, the blue house is
unfamiliar when you arrive, a place in a dream with no
welcome, no familiar face, no center.
Louise Cary Barden (lbarden.com) used to be a National Park Ranger’s wife and then college professor’s wife, wilderness camper, university English instructor, magazine writer, advertising copywriter and marketing executive. Now she is retired with two award-winning poetry chapbooks and uncounted poems in an assortment of poetry journals from coast to coast. Almost ten years ago she moved from North Carolina to Oregon to be near her grandchildren. The grandkids are grown and she is still learning to love the rain.
