About Cathy Carroll

Cathy Carroll lives in Thunder Bay. Her love of the Canadian Shield, Lake Superior and the surrounding landscape is reflected in her poetry. Her work has appeared in print and online in Canada and the United States. She has published online at Blood Orange Review, Right Hand Pointing, blue skies poetry and Mastodon Dentist.

prize winning poems by Cathy Carroll

Afternoon at the Flower Market
 

I could be any one of the people sitting at

the outdoor tables drinking tea, iced or hot,
coffee with cream. The one in blue sitting
under the trees, leaning in, one elbow on the
table. Listening. I could be the woman bent
over the baskets of flowers. Choosing only
those in shades of red, orange and yellow.
Picturing them at home on a wooden table near
a window, the crystal vase, a burst of colour.
Sipping red wine, while the sun goes down.

 Abandoned

The wolves still circle the fields in pursuit
of sheep that are only a memory fading
and beavers build their dams in the creek

just beyond the fence where lambs were
sometimes dropped too early, discovered
still and lifeless in their amniotic sac.

The house is gone, torn down bit by bit
for wood or pleasure in destroying
something standing empty and forgotten.

Trees grow along what used to be a road leading
out of there to the highway going east or west
depending on which way you turned.