PROSE POETRY
KAREN PAUL HOLMES
3 POEMS
For Caroline on Her Birthday
Love is a way of being in the world.
- Dr. David Hawkins
Like trying to name the particular color of the sky over these mountains and how different it is from the lake or how much the same, or how it has changed in this October light, I cannot describe you—cannot classify, catalog, label you. My sister, friend, mentor, wonder, butterfly, bird—all fall short like the orange leaf caught in a silk web on my window. And love, even when pronounced in uppercase, is not a large enough word. The world calls you Caroline, but you have no name in this heart—you’re just there. And in my solar plexus, crown chakra, and in the air. Yes there: You are.
“The sunshine that was you floods all the open door”
- after lines by Louise Imogen Guiney
There’s a bit of thunder in the gunmetal mountains, and the sky is silver. Instead of gold, the sun’s path on platinum water is silver, and I want it to be your silver-white hair. I’m tired of this making do, as Webster’s says to survive, to manage to live without, to use whatever is available. Your T-shirt is a little dress on me; it could be you brushing my bare breasts. I want the far-off rumble to be that sound low in your throat, but I am trying to get by on this dock—low sun soaking my skin instead of you. I read these lines, “Beyond the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live,” and want them to be true. I want to stem this lip quiver and tear brim, don’t want to slug up all those weathered stairs. You won’t enter our cabin with me, won’t enter in the silver-black of night. You need to find a way to come back from the dead.
- 2018
To My Husband on Our First Anniversary, 2021
Sac-ra-ment: a thing of mysterious & sacred significance; a channel of divine grace
In my floral robe, wrinkled and faded as a dishrag, dragging my 67-year-old self down the stairs to the living room where you’re pressed and dressed and have already calmed clients on the phone, but now you’re singing Here comes my baby--that bright-eyed bushytailed thing you do each day. It could be too much, this boosting me into morning. But I laugh, can’t be a cranky rusted gate because, well, those sea blue eyes, your rosy beam, arms unfurling peony-like, (and I, the ant burrowing). Plus French press you’ve kept warm for two hours and the oven ready to bake frozen biscuits. Like you do, I want to make tenderness a daily sacrament. Love is, wise ones remind us, also a verb, and I thank you for your patience while I practice. I want to verb you like you verb me.
Love is a way of being in the world.
- Dr. David Hawkins
Like trying to name the particular color of the sky over these mountains and how different it is from the lake or how much the same, or how it has changed in this October light, I cannot describe you—cannot classify, catalog, label you. My sister, friend, mentor, wonder, butterfly, bird—all fall short like the orange leaf caught in a silk web on my window. And love, even when pronounced in uppercase, is not a large enough word. The world calls you Caroline, but you have no name in this heart—you’re just there. And in my solar plexus, crown chakra, and in the air. Yes there: You are.
“The sunshine that was you floods all the open door”
- after lines by Louise Imogen Guiney
There’s a bit of thunder in the gunmetal mountains, and the sky is silver. Instead of gold, the sun’s path on platinum water is silver, and I want it to be your silver-white hair. I’m tired of this making do, as Webster’s says to survive, to manage to live without, to use whatever is available. Your T-shirt is a little dress on me; it could be you brushing my bare breasts. I want the far-off rumble to be that sound low in your throat, but I am trying to get by on this dock—low sun soaking my skin instead of you. I read these lines, “Beyond the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live,” and want them to be true. I want to stem this lip quiver and tear brim, don’t want to slug up all those weathered stairs. You won’t enter our cabin with me, won’t enter in the silver-black of night. You need to find a way to come back from the dead.
- 2018
To My Husband on Our First Anniversary, 2021
Sac-ra-ment: a thing of mysterious & sacred significance; a channel of divine grace
In my floral robe, wrinkled and faded as a dishrag, dragging my 67-year-old self down the stairs to the living room where you’re pressed and dressed and have already calmed clients on the phone, but now you’re singing Here comes my baby--that bright-eyed bushytailed thing you do each day. It could be too much, this boosting me into morning. But I laugh, can’t be a cranky rusted gate because, well, those sea blue eyes, your rosy beam, arms unfurling peony-like, (and I, the ant burrowing). Plus French press you’ve kept warm for two hours and the oven ready to bake frozen biscuits. Like you do, I want to make tenderness a daily sacrament. Love is, wise ones remind us, also a verb, and I thank you for your patience while I practice. I want to verb you like you verb me.
Karen Paul Holmes has two poetry collections, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin, 2018) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich, 2014). Her poems have been featured on The Writer's Almanac and The Slowdown. Publications include Diode, Valparaiso Review, Verse Daily, and Prairie Schooner, among others. She’s the current “Poet Laura” for Tweetspeak Poetry.
