Jared Carter

Song

Is more than sound that clings to what
          can still be heard
When words lift into music – fraught,
          that sudden stir

Of finches in a cage, constrained
          and yet impelled
To reach beyond themselves, for rain,
          or for the swell

Of wind that bends the gnarled trees.
          Enough, to know
That still, among the myriad leaves,
           their notes will go.

Jared Carter’s most recent book of poems, The Land Itself, is from Monongahela Books in West Virginia.  He lives in Indiana.