KAREN ARNOLD - POEMS

Karen Arnold, literary gypsy, writes, pursues independent scholarship, and also creates and moderates literary book discussion series in Maryland.  She has taught at colleges in the United States and Sweden, served as Poet-in-residence at Montpelier Cultural Arts Center in Laurel, MD, and taught creative writing workshops to children and adults.  Currently she creates and facilitates Literature and Medicine and Veterans reading/discussion groups sponsored by the Maryland Humanities, libraries, and hospitals in Maryland.  She did her masters and PhD work at the University of Maryland, College Park.  Her chapbook, Border Crossings, celebrates the challenges change presents on many levels. Her love of the wide sky and ocean beaches both spring from Midwestern roots.

​My problem is I never was a slut

took no rides from strangers
regarded hitchhiking as uncertain
so my poems fill with air--
high, wide, blue over a field of
clacking corn stalks on Cook’s farm

They recall a tornado 
unstacking our neighbor’s chimney
hold the smell of cracking stems
breaking underfoot while we stamp
through fields of prairie weeds  hanging
forgotten along four-lane Halsted Street

glint with a sun setting caught
in six panes of our back porch door
windows to dinner cooking quietly
vibrate with the drag of roller skates
making trip after trip along
a sidewalk rough but long enough

the whisper of an old willow tree
higher than all the neighborhood roofs
whose minnow-shaped leaves delight us
snapping clacks of sheets found
by wind in the backyard

In my poems uncertainty rides
closer to home, sensual and
seemingly known

​

Sunset
​

          From Pemaquid we watch the sun
            blackening pines on the far point’s ridge
             Fire slick sky flares white hot, thin lavender, clear
            Darkness rises from the water
            Seven warning lights
            flash holes in the danger
            safety-safety, hazard-hazard
            flashing, ritual rotation 
            marking sea, rock, intersection
            Seven warning lights
            name dark the conflagration 

​

For the poets I’m reading now

          These men
            write of lighthouses and surrender
            They speak of a man coming upon a woman
            never the dark sea
            that breaks the point
            combing the seaweed over and over
            the same rock ledge
            combing the ocean floor
            under the filling moon
            under the flashes of light –
            the green sea
            whose tides and storms
            make the lighthouse burn
            These men forget
            the line of salt 
            along their lips
            in the dark

​

​Night Driving

       
          I                                 

 I start north
Concrete sluices underneath
but the Platte rises in my mind
a river I have never seen surfaces
    with the sound of wheels
    squeaking west
    the shouts of children
    begging to ride or walk
    women jounced on wagon seats
    the tiresome, stinking work of walking alongside animals
billows into consciousness
as I work my way to the
wrap of Maine-air nights
where windows bedside slice cold
against the cheek

I go to water winding up the Kennebec to Bath
    and back to sea
    a steady whispered slide
    a rattling white roil when
    tide reverses
    indifferent slaps in slight wind
    or lapping wash in wakes of motors
water I know by sound

The unknown Platte haunts me
    its shallow fords
    the shush of grasses – wind or water blown
    the chop of wind on shallow sweeps
insinuate themselves
as I hurtle through night towns
Lowell, Lawrence on the Merrimac
that swept away the lives of women
weaving
swept them into wilderness and sad dark nights of fatigue
the way the wagons echoing my Platte drudged west 
​I hurtle north
in quest of silence
rocks and the unforgiving
heaving, little-caring ocean
    where I may poise myself
    and gamble all my possibilities
    on planes that carry ships and light
    on to beyond
I sense my relative significance
as ever-winding spools of tide slip up
the rocks to where water’s high mark
cuts a blackened rim

II

Life on the trail
the gypsy swell of grasses over heads
that life I do not own
but flight I know
    a dark struggle
    to shed identity
    with miles
    to run from past excess
    or half-done deeds
    to catch the coast
    at dark
    lights flashing
    beside me or across miles
    island to island, shore to point
    cove’s end to ledges
I crave the half mad sense
of tramping out
beyond familiar time
beyond the daily conversation 
I know the Platte missing
from the windshield
a thousand miles or more beyond my view
its trail of broken wagons
long gone
squinting men, blistered children
sweating women, aching bones
and itching bites
long covered
by convenience, ingenuity and time
    I know the Platte rising
    Its silent flood of migrants
    faceless
    at the highway’s edge
    cheers me on
    like extras on movie sets
    the mad waving of arms
    repeating
    a crowd scene’s motions
    the way actors rehearse lines
silent open mouths
signs of life where

I am my dark pilgrim self
exhausted
flung into the river
following the course it carves
across the land
to shores
where life resumes
on terms set
by the roar of wind
currents off rocky ledges
faith in the urge to flee