Louise Cary Barden

Paragon Park

Louise Barden

In Tea Leaves (N.C. Writers’ Network, 1996)

The stand where I served soft ice cream

leaned toward the Atlantic just under

the world's largest roller coaster.

I learned fast to make a medium cone

with two turns and a twist of my hand.

A large took three. A chocolate dip

required a quick flip. But if it fell,

I could trade it in a cup for my boyfriend's

mistakes at the grill next door

before we shared lunch break screaming

up and down the track's bright drops and corners.

He was six-foot-three and a year younger,

which didn't matter. We both knew

it would end with summer.

The night we watched Anthony Perkins stab

Janet Leigh in the shower, he let me

bury my face against his shoulder

and only held my hand.

On days off we walked among mothers

playing with babies in the sand

and threw balls to win stuffed bears

while the coaster shrieked across the waves.

Those neon days the tilt and whirl

of candy-colored buildings

gave no hint of seaside condominiums.

Every night we were sure

the great arched entrance would light up in red,

and I knew I could do anything

with two or three twists of the wrist.

If Gravity Should Fail

Louise Barden

in A Rough Sort of Beauty ( Univ. of Arkansas Press)

On this mountain ridge, we camp at the lip

of the world, lean back in grass to feel

how a tilt of earth could make us slip

from our solid peak and spill

into the dome of starry dark.

It would be an easy way to leave

this land, rising like a spark

above our rock-ringed blaze, retrieved

by God straight into his heaven.

We have already half forgotten life

in those narrow valleys almost hidden

by spreading fog below. The grief

of ordinary days fades, expires,

and we are pulled by night’s cold fires

River Travel

Louise Barden

in Chattahoochee Review and Tea Leaves

(N.C. Writers’ Network, 1996)

The summer after we married

when our jobs disappeared and left us

with no place to live for weeks

we loaded bread and dried beef

in your Dad's dented canoe

and headed down the wild part

of the Buffalo even though the season

was wrong and the water low.

With days feathered out before us

we drifted like leaves through July heat,

empty pastures and woods, stopping

at each curve to crack open the bindings

of your new guides to wildlife, add discoveries

to your list. Fat-lipped Monkeyflowers,

Mimulus alatus. Vervain, verbena stricta.

Snowy egrets in the shallows.

A pair of ruby-throated hummingbirds,

he leading, she following. At one sharp bend,

we floated in the shadows of a limestone wall

eating peanut butter sandwiches,

then scrambled up to look for caves.

Farther on it was Wild Senna,

False Pimpernel, a giant bullfrog.

Now and then a cabin on the bank.

Evenings we camped on gravel bars,

stirred soup and rice over driftwood flames,

watched stars pierce velvet,

and crouched beside black water scrubbing smoke

from a Boy Scout mess kit. Cicadas rattled

above a whisper of cars crossing distant bridges.

After a row of nights spent on river-polished rocks,

the evening we lay on sand felt soft.

Years later I still see mornings opening

like phlox on the banks, sometimes feel

sun loosen my shoulders, knotted

with pulling a paddle over and over.

I remember how often the clear stream spread out,

leaving us within inches of the bottom,

how when the river wouldn't carry us

to the next pool, we stepped

into the brief shock of cold and walked.

Copyright Louise Barden 1996