What You Could See by Pamela Hobart Carter

It is the last time we talk.
We sit close together
at the end of the dining room table
as if the rest of the family knows
this is my final visit—
while you can dress and mix and eat—
and gift us proximity.

We look at photographs you’d shot
of turkey poults and Canada goose goslings
standing in the unmowed grass beyond the ridge
of the back hill. Maybe the blue pall
was an issue of overexposure or your film
had decayed. I can tell we are looking at birds
and fields. Can distinguish your careful compositions.
I suppose these prints are your final creative work.

So often you snuck into a meadow to perch
in solemn patience on a boulder
and sight through your enormous Leica
to save for us what you could see.



Pamela Hobart Carter's poems have appeared in Barrow Street, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Seattle Star, among others. Her most recent poetry-involved events included curating a science poetry journal in theater form for Infinity Box Theatre Project and reading her poems at South Seattle College Community Chorus's spring concert.