Advent Calendar Day 16 - November 27
Excerpt from Talking Leaves Scrapbook—poems by Vivian Mary Carroll
Today’s bookish delight is our Thanksgiving gift to you.
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Talking Leaves Scrapbook
“Her poems resonate with a deep belonging … plucking with words the spines of light that exist in memory and making them sparkle before her mind—and ours.”
—Jimmy Santiago Baca, author of When I Walk Through That Door, I Am
Slow Fall Flute Song
I came this way.
Veiled eyes newly open
a sky-babe tucked in
a left hand slipping
through the Milky Way
fresh stars whistling
a feathered flute song.
My first smile.
A soft gasp
spotting raven
thermal gliding
above silver water
glistening with
flying fish.
And thunder.
Corn pollen raining yellow.
Raven’s shiny eye.
Black wings
greenhouse rising to greet
a hollow-bone
heaven lullaby.
Delivered.
Beyond
a topaz moat onto
a mound of corn.
I sleep and sprout.
Raven downdraft feathers
confetti fall.
Read more of these poems, in turns powerful and lighthearted, in TALKING LEAVES SCRAPBOOK by Vivian Mary Carroll.
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About the Author
Vivian Mary Carroll (Cherokee Nation) spent many years in regional theater from Alaska to New York, including teaching costuming to students of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows, Inc. Clown College. She worked for the Superior Court of Sacramento for twenty-three years and followed a British rock band and a country duo for many years, all the while writing and submitting for publication. She has studied at Idyllwild Arts Summer Writing Program, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, and Writing By Writers Boulder Generative Workshop. She received her MFA at the age of seventy-two from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Talking Leaves Scrapbook is her first published poetry collection.