Caroline Misner Poems

A docile panther lost in the night,
parting boughs if pine and cedar
with rough calloused paws,
and eyes of amber light.
...

“There is no rainbow, ” my lover claimed,
though she craned her neck and turned her head
on the afternoon of summered rain
that left my love as though for dead.
...

They needn’t tell us what year it is,
how many years we’ve lived here.
If they were ivy, it would be so simple.
But they are not, only the offspring
...

In the meadow
beyond the field, dill
grows among the wind-
swept grasses.
...

They’ve built a trellis and cut a path
through where the fir trees used to grow.
Spiny thistles burst with age, tall reeds
that have turned to rust and moss
...

The birds will find us still,
their feathered backs turned back to us,
even as we walk the path by the river,
sipping autumn’s oaky tang.
...

They have made a mockery of this,
building these boardwalks of old weathered planks
so that our soles may never touch
the shiftless silt that once resided here.
...

The smallest house had a black roof
and scarlet bricks, that gleamed
in the midst of a white velvet field,
the largest lot in our neighbourhood;
...

Wasted apples
lie like cracked eggs
on the lawn of this withering garden.
...

It was spring
the day I galloped
from my mother’s wound.
I was an accident, she said.
...