Compulsive Talker
Pamela Hobart Carter’s latest poem, about communication, connection and isolation.
She is not she if she holds still
she leaves the father eternally immersed in research,
the mother who lines windowsills with silent ferns,
plies them with silent care,
her children too
—heads out
An Art Walk through Edmonds in June
You will remember the eagerness of the artists to discuss their methods. You will remember the expectant and light mood of the crowds. And you will decide to return for another Third Thursday in this northern neighbor town.
Dog Walk Matins
Pam Hobart Carter brings to you an elegaic reminder of how after great pain a formal feeling comes.
City Council Proposes to Amend Zoning
Residents of this neighborhood choose to live here because they can walk to everything. For example, five grocery stores lie within a 6-block radius. The proximity of buses and services means that residents can sleep and garden and play on their quiet, residential streets and, in a matter of minutes, reach the pharmacy, restaurants, shopping, downtown, and entertainment. The neighborhood is racially diverse, zoned multi-family. Residents know each other well because they are out in the neighborhood, as pedestrians, as gardeners, as friends. Idyllic. This is the sustainable model the city is after and yet the mayor wants to alter its zoning regulations.
Apology
I apologize for finding this dog to shadow
you even as you pace the attic from desk
to window, you and he, a pair now, contemplating
those tough computer programming issues
at which dogs notoriously shine.
Elephant Song
On evenings filled with rain the elephants
believe my open door leads to a green stretch
of forest and trundle through.
Each concocts a song or howl of her own—
a moan of bassoon, a pitch of piccolos
and even agonies of strings to tell of elephant
tragedies coated in silt.
Spine of a Dog
Spine of a dog curves away from me and against, as heat
of a tired dog warms my skin through my sweater, through his fur.
He lies, front paws matched, chin tucked alongside them, neat.
One still beast; one, antsy with pen at arm’s end, cramming
the months and years and lives with rehearsals, games, dinners—
human scrawl.
Magic Trick
One morning—for a blink—a black rabbit
forages in downtown Seattle. I witness,
grin—the rabbit knows shortcuts
to Wonderland.
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