Skip to main content

Looking East, a poem by Catherine Grossman

Looking East
by Catherine Grossman 

On the deck above Cayuga Lake
awake before my family and the dawn,
on hand for the sun’s blaring rise.
It’s done now, nothing large enough
as a cloud to get in its way—
a terrifying white gold track
blazes across calm water—
reprimanding me—you are far
from home.  I am, but that’s a fool’s trail
built for water spiders.  I’ll stay here
and track what’s left of me
after hours of not breathing—that is,
I’m not sure of anything. The wind
is stirring.  Maybe I am this rented house,
its dusty corners and mementos
hanging on walls. I have no memories. 

The water is blue, black and lemon green
where weeds show through. The wake
is a meter-less lento, licking the shore,
the pace of a tongue on an ice cream cone.
Now, tender skins of summer leaves—
sweet cymbals, again and again, twisting
in their places, playing continuo,
continuo—a woodwind now, a vireo.


Bio: Catherine Grossman is a member emeritus of the Women's Creative Writing Group; she has an MFA from Warren Wilson. Her last published poem is in the Tipton Poetry Journal. She teaches at Ivy Tech Community College and at the Lafayette Writer's Studio, in Lafayette, Indiana.