After the Rain
After the rain, it’s time to walk the field
again, near where the river bends. Each year
I come to look for what this place will yield—
lost things still rising here.
The farmer’s plow turns over, without fail,
a crop of arrowheads, but where or why
they fall is hard to say. They seem, like hail,
dropped from an empty sky,
Yet for an hour or two, after the rain
has washed away the dusty afterbirth
of their return, a few will show up plain
on the reopened earth.
Still, even these are hard to see—
at first they look like any other stone.
The trick to finding them is not to be
too sure about what’s known;
Conviction’s liable to say straight off
this one’s a leaf, or that one’s merely clay,
and miss the point: after the rain, soft
furrows show one way
Across the field, but what is hidden here
requires a different view—the glance of one
not looking straight ahead, who in the clear
light of the morning sun
Simply keeps wandering across the rows,
letting his own perspective change.
After the rain, perhaps, something will show,
glittering and strange.
Reprinted from Darkened Rooms of Summer. Jared Carter’s most recent book of poems is The Land Itself, from Monongahela Books in West Virginia.
Healing
All it takes is time. A blister
_____develops on
Your palm, corpuscles minister,
_____and it is gone
Within the week. The earth itself
_____regenerates,
And color springs from that deep shelf
_____or barren waste
Come back to life. In this way each
_____remembered face
Or wave approaching some far beach
_____falls into place.
reprinted from Peacock Journal
Jared Carter is a poet living in Indiana.
These are very beautiful.
They resonate very deeply.
What a wonderful gift you have!
Greetings from a fellow Hoosier! One of my favorite walks (heat, rain, or snow) here in the Calumet Region (where there are few, if any, farm fields remaining) is the bike path around Wolf Lake. SCP will soon publish the poem of my musings while on that walk.
And I too make my daily walk hoping to find “something . . . glittering and strange.”
Denise, YOU, a Hoosier?! For some reason I can’t explain I thought you were English. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of introducing Jared at what he said might be his last public poetry reading, at Fruitlands, in Harvard, MA. I have to agree with everyone that Jared is a superb poet. When I read his work I often say to myself: HE is a poet; I just write poems
You’re right, C.B. The rest of us read this and write poems about where it comes from.
Mr. Carter is there.
Beautiful poems.
As it happens I purchased a copy of Darkened Rooms of Summer only a few days ago and am enjoying it very much, particularly the villanelles.
Jared,
You have a nice touch, a poet’s sensibility. I’d be interested to see more of your work and the different themes you develop in your poetry. Feel free to submit something to The Chained Muse poetry journal.
You can send something directly to [email protected].
Best,
David
Mssr. Gosselin, I’m sure you would love to publish something by Jared Carter, because then, and only then, will your journal become respectable. I wish you the best of luck, because luck is what it will take.