Poetry of Scott Carter

Scott Carter at Silk Creek with Graham

Scott Carter's Poetry

Untitled (for my mother)


The house that raised your children
Through windows and beyond walls
Is leveled.
Into weeds raised without reference
To measure or framework.
Save for the stones where vines
Surprise, constrict, devour...
Weeds have become a name
For the flowers we knew
And I scarcely remember
The difference anymore.

And the vines?
That hunger lies somewhere
Beneath all of this.
The stones
A broken shovel
A rusted hoe
And the sharp toothed rake
Overcome with the tangled voice
Of stone.

I can't pull the weeds from your voice
When you tell me the leaves I see at night
Won't return.
Or that my body is not mine when I look
At myself...Only when I sleep
Rests a heartbeat and sometimes I remember
The trees that held me
Away from the vines.

Scott Carter

Edges piece: Edges. I dig a shovel from the ground. Study its shape. Contrast its capacity and molecular story with Broken bottles strewn. Their fullness shattered in Colors Sharded around this hillside grave. Edges. Fractured vessels cast about this Wild place. Twisted metal Tired forms a labored memory. Tossed in a suspended form about this fertile ground. Was it true? Was it really like that? Edges She admired their grace On the ice. She knew their names... Twisting human form Tossed like vessels over this Sloped bank. Scott Carter Out The air is green today As if breathing the land Could wish color into it. But the way grass asserts itself And returning birds call down An intensity of light... ..In a month the willows By the road will cloud. Though the snow lies still. Between the corn rows I feel spring's slow idea Begin to grow. Scott Carter Fields If I were lost In one of these fields Among the anonomous corn, I wouldn't know Which way to turn. Home? Or toward my adopted town With its Church Peeling Feed Store. I think this must be What it is like when The last breath goes. And we wake in a new dimension. I may be a ghost like the others Dressed in old clothing The wind blows past And if in the past I could say I am not afraid of anything Now, I am afraid, deeply afraid of nothing. The vastness of it all. Out here in the fields The trees are dying of loneliness. Today's lesson: How fence and field Are one question to be solved In the germination of seed between them. How each thing is connected To every other thing. To learn that knotting Which ties together Sky, fence, barn and field, I look to the trees And wait for their new clothing. Scott Carter Looking for the Circular In sunday's paper One magic eye with two voices Paints a disturbing picture of history. Where I'm coming from, The sun rises on the twilight zone again And a writer's life is for the dogs. If you've seen one classic clown, You've seen them all, Swept up in renewal of life. Still, each word is a search. A gripping tale of survival Packed with emotion. Yes, it may be true that remodeling Brings life to the living room but, To find the word inside? You have to learn to just do it. Some think it's A different kind of place. That's like saying there are Different ways to buy televisions. I want to see stars. Star stuff on sale. I want to dance to the fiddles. Help the playground be a place Where nerds fall in love And dance like happy penguins. (from words randomely clipped from a sunday paper) Scott Carter