Caroline Misner Poems

The frill of trees jig their lady skirts
about their knees, buckling
under the weight of the wind’s hard approach.
When we exhale, our breaths dangle,
...

Death is not sudden, death does not grieve,
Death takes a while to achieve.
Death comes in layers;
Death is the mouse
...

Pale and translucent as pink lemonade,
the morning sun filtered its petals
to pure lightness;
...

They hold the power to pinch the sky,
little eyes, a multitude
so vast they outnumber us all
who have ever lived and ever will;
...

The old town buzzes and people swarm
to finger the treasures offered
from pushcart stalls,
the golden apples and lumpy pears.
...

There is a crack in the clouds
where sunbeams leak.
If I stand beneath their lustrous rays
will the sun shine done only on me?
...

The sun scoured the horizon until the sky bled,
a scarlet strip of grit.
We wandered through a valley
where vacant swings dipped,
...

It shouldn’t have gone on like this—
the protracted days of dust
that rises like steam from the roads,
the pink-brown mist of grains
...

Poor fish
who never made it to August
in 1963. It was
a good year, that year
...

A cardinal and wren
twirl together among the branches
of an alder;
...