When the sun and moon were in quadrature, when
the garden had become a wilderness and the clock refused to strike
When the old year died and the sand walked into
the sea with the neap tide
When you had been too long away and your old snowblue footprints
clotted and hesitated in the clay
When the worry of this undone song unsung so long
so loud my head I went inside and under to let the flood run free
Source: Poetry (February 2005).
Journalist, essayist, and editor (of the Milford, New Hampshire, weekly newspaper Cabinet), Kathryn Starbuck started writing poems in her 60s. Her first collection, Griefmania, was published in 2006. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, Sewanee Review, and Best American Poetry 2008.
Though she was a practiced prose writer, it was the experience of grief that led her to writing poetry. After the deaths of her . . .
Continue reading this biography
Poems by Kathryn Starbuck
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT
Nature,
Relationships,
Stars, Planets, Heavens,
Love,
Seas, Rivers, & Streams,
Heartache & Loss
POET’S REGION
U.S., Southern
Poetic Terms
Consonance,
Mixed
If you disagree with this poem's categorization, make a suggestion.