Dawn on the 45th Parallel
Daybreak makes
me see three-
dimensions flat.
I see black
paper instead
of poplars.
The world
a child’s cut-out
scrap. My son
and I cast long
featureless shadows,
matte.
Light breaking
the same way waters carve
banks and clay:
what it hits, it moves—
as unbidden creatures
diffuse through
wetland’s sloughs.
Leopard frog, muskrat,
great blue
heron.
The Ground is Not Down
There was someone,
in girlhood, I loved.
It was easy, like not giving up.
I didn’t even need
to try. All I needed
was to not stop
until I was dead.
Staying isn’t the same
as striving. It’s yielding
as a body must yield
because gravity. Like how up
and down aren’t rendered
by how I perceive them.
They’re rendered by force.
How the earth’s center
pulls everything toward it.
How a bridge’s supports
pitch to account for earth’s curve.
How the earth bids all things
made or born
surrender, surrender.
Lauren K. Carlson is the author of a chapbook Animals I Have Killed and has published recent work in River Mouth Review, Salamander, Waxwing and Ploughshares Blog. Winner of the 2022 Levis Stipend for her work-in-progress, she reads for Palette Poetry and is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. For more info, see www.laurenkcarlson.com.
Header photo by William T. Smith, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Lauren K. Carlson by Erik Carlson.
