The Ask
Carol Alexander
Blue enamel, rain in a cupped husk.
Sailing stones crease the valley’s verdigris
where some invisible discus thrower not a god
aiming into dark melts the transliterated star
to a sickle of gleaming slush. A cankered road girdles the soil.
If stones could move of their own
if water fumbling for its clear level fell into the arms
of bracken, foaming spawn, rain that is hard-shelled fauna
gelid clouds carved pebbles
the ground would take what it could. No more.
Canoe-shaped trout in a mountain lake
mango skin wallpaper olive/ blush/ mud
from the cold caldron, steep sides that flicker black
leap to an iron lure, swallow the runoff’s shape.
Carol Alexander is the author of the poetry collections Fever and Bone (Dos Madres Press, 2021) Environments (Dos Madres Press) and Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press). Alexander's poems appear in a variety of anthologies and in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, The Common, Cumberland River Review, Denver Quarterly, Hamilton Stone Review, One, Pif, Split Rock Review, Southern Humanities Review, Sweet Tree Review, Terrain.org and Third Wednesday. New work is forthcoming in Raintown Review and Ruminate.