Sound Catcher

photo: ralph murre

Sound Catcher

by Karen Stromberg

               After 39 years this is all I’ve done.

                        Dylan Thomas’ final words.

Dylan, Welsh god of the sea, what have you done

but drown yourself in sound and longing,

stroking the arched backs of words, seeking the ones

that curl together like cats on the tongue,

the ones that electrify the dark, that spark

the spongy dryness of the mind. But all your meanings

within meaning cannot disguise the fact

you did not rage against the pain. You slid

down the narrow neck of anything you found,

glass and flesh alike, and you drowned, you

who knew why water throws itself against the shore,

spurred your own demise, taking your sweet syrup

of sound, half-hidden on that agile tongue

upon which all your honey’d words were hung.

~ first published in qarrtsiluni

Bait

artwork: ralph murre

Bait

by Karen Stromberg

We catch poems

the way fishermen catch fish:

by sitting alone for hours

in the little boat of ourselves,

nothing much going on,

just a finger

on the filament

that leads

to the anguished worm

~ first published in The Ever Dancing Muse (1999)

Book, Lamp, Tree

artwork: ralph murre

Book, Lamp, Tree

by Karen Stromberg

I’m going to give you three words,

the nurse told my mother,

which was a lie--a moment later

she asked for them back.

Mother couldn’t find them,

looked around the room, dipped

one hand in and out of her pocket.

The truth is it was my fault.

I had plucked them out of the air

and locked them in my mind,

just to see if I could.

~ first published in Wordgathering