Peripheral Instinct
Like bone,
I thought as we drifted
out to the lone point & I saw
matchstick birch limbs
lying endsoaked along rock walls.
Through late August haze
they appeared velvet branches
shed by some stag, or
the quills of a pale-
winged tern, left
behind
when she mounted
on balmy current: all of these
relics of abandonment,
just as the two of us paddled out
cast together in this
experiment in buoyancy,
but susceptible to parting
like the horizon cleaves
its lake & sky.
Carrie Anne Potter is a senior at SUNY Geneseo, where she majors in English (literature) and French and minors in linguistics. She is from Potsdam, NY, and consequently considers herself at least half Canadian. When she’s not furiously debating the geographical boundaries of “upstate” and “downstate,” Carrie can be found writing poetry, taking herself on miniature road trips, or rewatching “Portlandia” for the hundredth time.