Cloud on Title

Pages turn like waves at a river’s edge. In the garden I rake my fingers through the story I was wrong not knowing, scooping up handfuls of stolen sovereignty, and vow by purple mountain majesties to know down deep the atrocities, to gather more truth like a panner gathering gold, to keep lamenting my pride and mythology. Kneeling in the soil, I look up into spacious skies and say to shining faces hidden in clouds backlit by the sun

I’m sorry, while amber waves of grief break over me.

— CARRIE AWBREY

Former editor of the Lakeside literary journal “Honings,” Carrie Elin Petersen '80 Awbrey has published poems in “Sequoia,” “The Formalist,” and “The Sunlight Press.” She received a B.A. in English with Creative Writing/Poetry Emphasis from Stanford, where she was awarded the Dorrit Sibley Writing Prize in Poetry. She lives with her husband in Northern California. This poem first appeared in a 2021 issue of “The Sunlight Press.”