Carol Pearce Bjorlie

The Sound of Fish Dreaming

They sleep
     stilled together.

Swallows swoop and a lark
spirals into the blue.

The fish sigh
like an audience listening to Brahms,
while the current streams through them
with no more noise than silk
in the wind.

title from a CD by Randy Sabien, jazz violinist
used with permission

Still Life With Pomegranate

Not at all still
because the candle flame
licks them to life:

purple eggplant
orange peppers
mexican yellow primroses

stipples pears in the turquoise bowl,
and pomegranates
which remind me of a rich interior life.

The room is still as a clock
before the second hand moves;
still as the book I can’t find.

The pears will not roll,
the flower pot will stay put;
the pomegranates lend contrast.

The space inside me
where constancy matters
is full.