Carrie Fountain is an American poet and writer of young adult fiction. She is from Las Cruces, New Mexico. She was a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers, and received Swink Magazine’s Award for Emerging Writers and the Marlboro Poetry Prize. She wrote for the Texas Observer, and was poetry columnist for the Austin American-Statesman. Carrie was named the 2019 Poet Laureate of Texas.
TIME TO BE THE FINE LINE OF LIGHT
Carrie Fountain
between the blind and the sill, nothing
really. There are so many things
that destroy. To think solely of them
is as foolish and expedient as not
thinking of them at all. All I want
is to be the river though I return
again and again to the clouds.
All I want is to stop beginning sentences
with All I want. No—no really all
I want is this morning: my daughter
and my son saying “Da!” back and forth
over breakfast, cracking each other up
while eating peanut butter toast
and raspberries, making a place for
the two of them I will, eventually,
no longer be allowed to enter. Time to be
the fine line. Time to practice being
the line. And then maybe the darkness.