[Poetry] Two Poems by Pamela Hobart Carter

SISTERS

after Galway Kinnell

They walk next to next,

sister and sister, and tell

the tale of all they know, while the tide

salts their words with shine —

reflecting sky, reflecting water,

and earth besides. Then the plot diverts

to their future days, the seaway first straight.

The course easy or not they can’t see

from this shoreline where flows shimmer by

and entrain specks of black mica.

They will watch every flaked-off chip

as if their happiness has cast

itself in fragments of rock — broken

into and by the passing floods

which scrape away at familiar stories

to leave truth. Once “the end” looms

around some curving bank,

whether recording each fleck’s path

in a notebook or mind, they devise

to let these thoughts jostle them

back and forth from now to childhood —

as deep as they will into old and as far

into horizons as time allows

until their small selves manifest

beside their today-flesh versions

and their bodies not yet here.

Each will study each closely

amid laughter at certain earnest ventures,

and pangs for every chance overlooked

to float soft

over and through, even where waves rise like walls.

STANDING WITH YOU ON THE BLUFF

Do you remember when

we stood on the bluff

at night to count Mississippis

of the lighthouse light,

to count our blessings

at being able to stand

on a bluff that overlooked

water and distance,

to count the beats

of the waves below us

drumming the sloped sand

of the unseen beach,

to count our breaths

of communal silent rapture

under a bold moon

with its silver road across the bay,

to count the backs

of leaping dolphins so far

from us that they appeared

as a single creature, mythical?

Pamela Hobart Carter grew up as a landed immigrant in Montreal. When she returned stateside, she earned two geology degrees and became a teacher. Her plays have been produced in Seattle (her home), Montreal, and Fort Worth. She is a Yavanika Press mixed-genre winner for "Behind the Scenes at the Eternal Everyday" and author of two other poetry chaps.