Jared Carter

The Great Serpent Mound in Adams County, Ohio is the largest serpent effigy in the world. Photo credit: Columbus Metropolitan Library, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Serpent

An effigy of something we 
         cannot grasp all
At once, but must climb up to see
         the way it falls

And sidewinds down the hill. It holds
         a giant egg
Within its mouth. Grandmothers told
         us – some do beg,

In rags, and riddle how the world
          first came to be.
It was imagined, here, unfurled
          beneath these trees.



Teasdale

Of all the singers, you were most
          attuned to rain –
Those days when it came down, a ghost
          would speak of pain,

And all the things rain is so good
          at drawing out –
And in that colloquy your mood
          was not of doubt

Or bitterness, but of the way 
          the rain will seem 
To dance, sometimes, as if at play,
          and not a dream.

Jared Carter’s new collection of poems, Heart’s Forest, is forthcoming from Able Muse Press in 2027. He lives in Indiana.