Pamela Hobart Carter

CONVERSION

The first boy interested in me,
in his thirties, was convicted
of murdering his estranged wife.
Have the decades of incarceration
returned him to human form?
A writer friend served a stint
for armed robbery, after which
he did become a decent citizen.
You’re not convinced.
Change seems unlikely.

What alters any of us?

An article covering ills of certain lipids?
Do we read, then swear off cocoa butter,
or eat more of it? Either way, but this
is about content at the epicenters
of our self-ness. Soul conversion, not diet.

Don’t you wonder how this confinement
may cause shifts in our covert cosmoses,
far below skin? Astral quakes.
Murkinesses of dark matter reallocating opacity.
Critical gravitational densities coagulating.
Leading us to a black hole brink.

Or its converse.

There is a chance we emerge
convalesced.
Emotional timidity forsaken.
Raring to convey each desire,
converse with every cousin,
compose a daily glow.

We cry
for those who cannot recover.
Converge in a ring, a coven to honor existence.

On our long walk to the waterfront,
where a seal suns on the boat launch,
and back uphill through that strip
of urban green, I ask, “Is it naïve?”
and listen for sarcasm.
None comes.


Pamela's YouTube video reading of "Conversion":



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Pamela confesses: "When writing poems about my love life, I decided to Google that first boy interested in me and reeled: he had murdered his estranged wife with a crossbow. This discovery, mixed with our Covid experiences, prompted this poem. (Today I looked him up again: released from prison, after 29 years.)"

Photo by Omar Willey

After earning two degrees in geology, PAMELA HOBART CARTER taught science, art, and preschool for thirty-plus years. On the side she wrote plays, poems, fiction, and non-fiction. Now she writes full-time and teaches on the side. A dozen of her plays have been read or staged in Seattle (her home), Montreal (her childhood home), and Fort Worth (never her home). She has two poetry chapbooks, Her Imaginary Museum (Kelsay Books, 2020) and Held Together with Tape and Glue (Finishing LIne Press, 2021).