Do You Remember by Caroline Cahill
Associate poetry editor Heath Joseph Wooten on today’s bonus poem: With stunning command of both image and the line, Caroline Cahill’s “Do You Remember” traces the distance of longing and the ephemera of memory while reinvigorating common notions of moon, stars, and sky into a tender and unforgettable poem.
Do You Remember
How the full moon pulled us
into the lowest tide as if we
were the water it wanted?
How the Big Dipper scooped us
into its mouth as if we were the sky?
If July is home to the thunder moon,
when does lightning strike?
Or is there no moon for that?
I wanted to be closer than the stars
that fell before us, but longing
was the only distance I could touch.
Tell me gravity is a lie or tell me
I am not alone.
Caroline Cahill’s poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review and Copper Nickel. She received her MFA in poetry from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is a freelance editor who also works on a farm in central Oregon.
Tip the poet: Venmo, @ctcahill.
