RIVER
Is a river alive? A cloud?
Who knows? And what
Is the right thing to do? A crowd
gathers with bats
And clubs at the gate, to demand
that something be
Strictly obeyed. Who gives commands,
who bends the knee?
Clouds dissipate, though shadows surge
and slip below;
The river contains things that merge
within its flow.
EKSTASIS
Those gone before admonish us,
who shelter in
Uncertain refuge from the gusts
of angry wind;
They testify not for what seems,
but what holds true—
Trees that give shade, and flowing streams
that beckon you
To step outside the self—where shade,
now one with tree,
Flows far beyond what is displayed,
or thought to be.
A folk belief in the American South and Midwest
held that if someone tears down the web of a yellow
garden spider, it will write that person’s name in the
rebuilt web. This could mean misfortune, illness,
or death for that individual.
FOLKLORE
An accident, he said, her broom
brushed it away.
It was rebuilt, and in that room
where she would lay
By evening, we recalled her name
in script within
The spider’s web. She died the same
night. “But again,
You don’t believe—” I saw the line
of letters there,
And so did she. I misjudged time,
and she, despair.
Jared Carter’s most recent collection, The Land Itself, is from Monongahela Books in West Virginia. His Darkened Rooms of Summer: New and Selected Poems, with an introduction by Ted Kooser, was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2014. A recipient of several literary awards and fellowships, Carter is from the state of Indiana in the U.S.
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles
Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International
Borderless 