Here is the latest installment of Poet’s Corner, presented by the Edmonds Poetry Group.

Water and Straw

I’d been walking the floor of the ocean all night
mapping the terrain with the soles of my feet,
the current’s direction as it moved through my hair.
At dawn I rose, the weight of me unearthly.

Mapping the terrain with the soles of my feet
I saw you standing in the orchard.
At dawn I rose, the weight of me unearthly.
Water poured from my ears, pooling on the hardwood floor.

I saw you standing in the orchard
a wheel of red apples circling you like a rising crown.
Water poured from my ears, pooling on the hardwood floor
as I made myself lift against gravity.

A wheel of red apples circled you like a slipped crown.
You were back in that place where you do not know who you are.
I made myself lift against gravity,
let the earth pull me into place.

You were back in that place where you do not know who you are.
I thought I should call you in to the house, to the room with its four walls
let the earth pull you into place
while the birds ladle their song into the morning.

I thought I should call you in to the house, to the room with the four walls
you knew inside and out, bend you into its container.
The birds ladled their song into the morning
as I walked myself forward towards the tasks of the day.

You knew it inside and out, bent yourself into its container
let it smooth your wilding eyes with its shielded windows.
I walked myself into the tasks of the day—
its square root rhythms, its amnesia about the morning star.

You let it smooth your wilding eyes with its shielded windows,
let the sun sifting its yellow through the curtains bring you home, walk you
into its square root rhythms, its amnesia about the morning star.
I left, drove a car, turned corners, purchased a straw broom.

You let the sun sifting its yellow through the curtains walk you home.
I heard chainsaws, barking dogs, smelled the undercurrents of damp roots.
I left, drove a car, turned corners, purchased a straw broom
and later, I swept the house clean.

Carol Tiebout

~ ~ ~ ~

In the Red Vinyl Booth
of the Horseshoe Cafe

We traded Harvey Wallbangers, Velvet Hammers and straight up tequila,
kicked Nixon and Agnew around and came up with a board game
about Camp David that would use lacquered walnut shells and peas as markers.

When the acid slid in, clipping all the edges in clear light, we fell out
into the late-night street now stuffed with one hundred thousand
points of cool fog that wrapped the curbs and thinned under the lamps

into a series of 3 foot worlds. A drunk appeared below us, his limbs curled up
and waving like a crab that had been tossed onto its back from its rocking bed to hard
granite while still holding the comfort of the sea. He looked up at me

with baby kissed blue eyes and asked, “Are you an angel?” I thought for a moment
maybe I was, maybe in the realm of infinite possibilities, it could be there on certain
Tuesdays, my name in the index of Alan Watts’ book under A.

Fifty years later the sky opens up, raindrops the size of cats sing
the hood of my car as it curves past the turnoff to town
and in a loud whooosh, deafening as a splash down, I no longer

understand why I would hold back any longer from
whatever walks into this minute
from the deep seams of the world.

Carol Tiebout

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Carol Tiebout lives in Edmonds on the traditional land of the Coastal Salish peoples. Her work can be found in New Ohio Review, in Calyx Journal of Art and Literature, on The American Jewish Historical Society Website and on the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition website as the 2022 poetry competition winner. Her poetry is informed by 17 years of work in hospice and a deep concern for the Earth and the future generations of all her inhabitants.