The Tattooed Poets Project: Caroline Goodwin

Today's poem was submitted by Caroline Goodwin.

Entitled "In Summer Plumage," this poem was published in Mantis (Stanford University, June 2007):

IN SUMMER PLUMAGE

Black oystercatcher. Black-necked

stilt. A patch of gnats

lifts off at my feet. Mudflat. Rot

and salt. The great egret

doubled on the water. Stick legs

bending. Approaching, my husband

in a silver canoe. Dragonflies,

kinked reeds. Something about vows.

Wreathing my head, the split light.

When I place one hand in the water,

striders collect at my wrist. Tattoo

of the eagle, the braided

leather string. Killdeer will feign

a broken wing to distract

from the nest. Golden plover. Common

snipe. Old lover who cut off all

his hair and mailed it. Shiny

as bottleflies. Kept in my desk.

And whose ring is this? Whose

feather, whose expanse of skin?

Be sure to head over to Tattoosday to see Caroline's tattoo here.

Caroline Goodwin moved to the San Francisco Bay Area from Sitka, Alaska in 1999 to attend Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Fellow. She teaches poetry and nonfiction writing workshops at California College of the Arts and, with Hugh and Mary Behm-Steinberg of Berkeley, is the publisher of MaCaHu poetry chapbook press.