for Tony and Dustin
in the bottom of the bag in
the glass in the bottle
in the starlight and the smallest
constellation in the soft gills
in the underside of the frond
in the hank of black beads
in the melody rising from the meadow
folded and coming up again
amphibious pearly throat
in the screw gun and the wrench
in the satellite over the beach
spokes of the wheel and flat screen
in the sand sliding under us in the
sand falling over us fine as flour
in the paw print and arrowhead
at the end of the lane in the foxglove
in the circle of dust in the object
at rest in the shade in the surf
in the vector traveling north a kitchen
table a blue cloth and cypress
green as jade in the pivot and the radius
in the smoke rolling down
in the centipede the iridescent
sensation of all its legs
in the tent pitched in a bright meadow
in the breeze in the firelight
that warmed us orange and red in
momentum in the moth head
in the death head in the talons of the owl
in the folds of cloth where we found it
where we left it lying in its finery
in its wrecked wings
This poem first appeared in Peregrine (Finishing Line Press).
—
Caroline Goodwin moved to the San Francisco Bay Area from Sitka, Alaska in 1999 to attend Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry. Her recent books are Old Snow, White Sun (JackLeg Press, Washington, DC), Madrigals (Big Yes Press, Arroyo Grande, CA), and Matanuska (Aquifer Press, Wales, UK). She teaches at California College of the Arts, Stanford Continuing Studies, and UC Berkeley Extension; from 2014-16 she served as the first Poet Laureate of San Mateo County, where she lives on the coast with Jimi Hendrix the Pug. http://www.carolinegoodw.com/
