The Chained Muse

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The Chained Muse
The Chained Muse
After the Rain

After the Rain

By Jared Carter

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David Gosselin
Nov 19, 2023
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The Chained Muse
The Chained Muse
After the Rain
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Rainbows in Art | Hudson river school, American art, Art google

After the rain, it’s time to walk the field 
again, near where the river bends. Each year 
I come to look for what this place will yield— 
lost things still rising here. 

The farmer’s plow turns over, without fail, 
a crop of arrowheads, but where or why 
they fall is hard to say. They seem, like hail, 
dropped from an empty sky, 

Yet for an hour or two, after the rain 
has washed away the dusty afterbirth 
of their return, a few will show up plain 
on the reopened earth. 

Still, even these are hard to see— 
at first they look like any other stone. 
The trick to finding them is not to be 
too sure about what’s known; 

Conviction’s liable to say straight off 
this one’s a leaf, or that one’s merely clay, 
and miss the point: after the rain, soft 
furrows show one way 

Across the field, but what is hidden here 
requires a different view—the glance of one 
not looking straight ahead, who in the clear 
light of the morning sun 

Simply keeps wandering across the rows, 
letting his own perspective change. 
After the…

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