1/20/2020 Caroline Goodwin features

1/20/2020 Caroline Goodwin host Bruce

Caroline Goodwin's books are Trapline (2013), Peregrine (2015), The Paper Tree (2017) and Custody of the Eyes (2019). Her recent poem, "Snaketime III", was runner-up in The Sewanee Review 2019 poetry contest, judged by Carl Phillips. She teaches at CCA, Stanford Continuing Studies and UC Berkeley Extension (in the summer). In 1999 she moved from Sitka, Alaska to California to attend Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Fellow; from 2014-16 she served as San Mateo County's first Poet Laureate.

SNAKETIME III

If you show up

today I will open

the door, put on

the kettle. Familiar

as the net-vein willow,

catkin fur

we use for

wicks. At night

I can hear

the roots

beneath the floor. Girl

who sits humming

on the back porch,

tapping her hands

into fins.

If under

the lichens the weevils

are moving,

if under my

palms the water

spreads.

A faraway flapping.

A trap door,

wind. The ways

in which the river

speaks. Open it up,

you’ll see. You’ll let it in.