Photo by Benjamin Oliver
Wine River
Wine river of melted crowns
calls me home from the forest.
On the bank I drift, I mark
my bright axe laid down to rest.
Gold river: too deep for crossing
no wood left to build a boat.
Boat Poem
Yes, I am off again
in my blue boat
sporting blue sails,
blue rigging, blue oars,
blue mast scooped
out of a blue forest
a blue time ago.
Never fear!
Below blue decks
my cargo is blue wool,
a blue thicket, blue
spades, and a blue
mountain, which grows
by gulping blue policy.
Do not be troubled!
It’s only blue business
I’m about, piloting my blue
boat, which blue inspectors
from the board of blue
trustees always give
blue marks. (Progress—
how they smooch
its blue face—)
Not to worry!
Though I steer my blue boat
through blue, blue harbors,
I myself am not at all blue!
So blue heart, I’ll take
my leave of you.
Cast off, cast off, blue hands!
CAROLYN OLIVER is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, 2024), Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022; selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize), and three chapbooks. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in TriQuarterly, Image, Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, Consequence, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts.
Read more by Carolyn Oliver
Author’s Website
Poem in Image
Poem in Pedestal
Poems in Cutleaf