Because the fields of my childhood vanished, I carry smoke in my hair. I bed dank dirt in my hands. My father shook his wars, sank the hum of their dangers in mud. The deeper he dug, the more it smelled like bread. Mothers placed seeds in the graves of those guns. I have not forgotten the rivers that flowed underground. How the cottonwood roots sipped, made ships for my brothers and me. We sailed to places where trees were called palm. Where night’s catharsis couldn’t break us. If days were fruit, those days were plums, succulent in their viscid light and endless sources of juice. When fall turned leaves to breezing husks, we blanketed in mulch, with bulbs making food of the ground.
Bio: Tina Carlson is a poet and a psychiatric healthcare provider. Her poems have appeared in many journals and blogs. She was featured in the 2017 Nov/Dec Poets & Writers ‘5 over 50.’ Her book GROUND, WIND, THIS BODY (UNM Press) was published in March 2017. She recently completed a collaborative manuscript called WE ARE MEANT TO CARRY WATER with Katherine DiBella Seluja and Stella Reed which will be published by 3: A Taos Press. Source: https://hungermtn.org/in-the-embassy-of-silence-tina-carlson/