A Collection of Thoughts Caroline Sweet

John Graves Award Judge

This year’s judge for the John Graves Award is Erin Elizabeth Smith. Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Creative Director at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the Managing Editor of Sundress Publications. Her third full-length poetry collection, DOWN, was released in 2020 by Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Guernica, Ecotone, Mid-American, Tupelo Quarterly Crab Orchard Review, and Willow Springs, among others. She earned her PhD in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and is now a Distinguished Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Tennessee.

A Collection of Thoughts

Caroline Sweet

I was chasing gray clouds and profound ideas When all I needed was blue sky and simple thoughts

“I have never seen that tree before, cutting through the blue,” I say, utterly sure of myself When, in fact, I certainly have before

I feel I must write about it And its profoundness But it cuts through blue, not gray And I am having trouble

I am slogging through the words I have thought of words to share with You I spend my time waiting for them But they don’t come And I don’t remember them now And I don’t think I ever will

There is too much in my head too many words too many trees too many new bare trees too many old green trees too many leaves on the ground too much blue cold and not enough red hot too much red hot and not enough blue cold and too much wrong oh god oh god oh You

The songs in my head won’t help

They have You and your cold melodies, your minors and sharps and flats, your rock and your bluegrass, your righteous red anger and your righteous blue sadness, and your winter, and your woodsmoke in the winter

Yesterday I smelled woodsmoke But it was not cold; instead, so very hot And I found myself confused because I am utterly sure it’s time for woodsmoke There is too much wrong

Who are You whom I mentioned? Is it You who can sit on stage In your sparkly white suit Fingers stroking keys, fingers scampering over strings?

You (You) are the one to whom they sing hymns, the one to whom they laugh, the one to whom they cry, the one about whom they will not stop caring and You Matter to Them and My (forgotten) Words Matter Not to You

But even greater than Mattering You (You) can put your head back and listen to, control The orchestra The hearty cello, listen The swelling violins, listen The pitter of a flute, listen The tangling piano, listen The cold piano, listen The absence of the piano, listen

How can one hear absence?

I can hear it in my head, no–I can feel it in my head, no–