Friday from the Archives: “The Influx”, “Holy Ground,” and “In the Graveyard” three poems by Catherine Carter with art by Jane Filer in NCLR 2011
Time is almost up for this year’s Applewhite Prize contest! We’re finishing our Poetry Month highlights with this poem from our “North Carolina Environmental Writing” feature in 2011. Catherine Carter has been a long friend of NCLR, most recently reviewing for our NCLR Online Spring 2025 issue, and she has both won and been a judge for the Applewhite contest. Submissions close on April 30!
Holy Ground
By Catherine Carter
At night the world sings, here where the ground
beetles throb at the screens,
and outside in the foot-deep pond
the green frogs swell their throats to call
one of the thousand names of God
where deer flies take your blood
like sacrament. To the painted turtles
the slime of their sunny logs is silk,
or sex, beyond words delicious,
if they had words. The sand
on the floor, in your bed, is ground
crystal, clear as salt, and salt
crusts the air like a margarita glass,
refracts the light till the heavy air
is light. To brightness you rise early.
You need gills to breathe this air,
and you have gills, loosening, softening
with every breath; you could lick the wind
like the whale her baleen, and be fed.
Read Carter’s Applewhite-winning poem at ProQuest. Add the NCLR 2011 issue to your collection.
