The Clearing by Carl Little : American Life in Poetry

The Poetry Foundation

Library of Congress

University of Nebraska
at Lincoln

American Life in Poetry: Column 284

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

I’d guess there are lots of people, like me, who sometimes visit places which in memory are hallowed but which, through time, have been changed irreparably. It is a painful experience but it underlines life. Here Carl Little, who lives in Maine, returns to a place like that.

The Clearing

The sunbox lies in pieces,

its strips of aluminum foil

flaking away to the wind,

tanning platform broken up

for kindling. Planted grass

sprouts where the path once

sharply turned to the left

circumventing underbrush,

there the man (a boy then)

stumbled on beauty’s wrath:

pale sisters yelling him off,

scrambling for clothes to cover.

All has been cleared, thick

cat briar raked into piles

and set ablaze, invincible

ailanthus stacked for dump.

All’s clear and calm save

his childhood rushing head-

long through tearing thickets,

and the sisters, barely glimpsed

against reflective flashing,

laughing after him, then

lying back to catch

all the sullen autumn sun they can.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2006 by Carl Little and reprinted from Ocean Drinker: New and Selected Poems, Deerbrook Editions, 2006, by permission of Carl Little and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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