Ecstasy Amid Elegies

Introducing the poetry of Barbara Siegel Carlson

Editor’s note: Tisha B’av might not be the perfect time to consider the gloom that defines ecopoetry. (Or is it?) If ecopoetics makes a god of nature, as its priests beat their chests — and ours — for the sin of global warming, then where can we turn for comfort?

To poems by Barbara Siegel Carlson, as it turns out. Author of four collections of poems — most recently “Current” (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2026) — Carlson’s own brand of nature writing doesn’t condemn readers. Instead, it captures those moments when what’s wild and what’s human meet, and the light of the sacred emerges.

Through poems like “Where Nothing Is” and “Swinging Near Dark,” on our need to reach for the heavens, and others like “Cattails” and “In a Gust,” on our openness to the ecstatic, even amid sorrow, Carlson fills us with wonder at what we’ve survived, as well as gratitude for all that is good.

On this most solemn holiday, we hope that you find meaning, encouragement and beauty within the five poems below.

— Susan Comninos, Poetry Editor

WHERE NOTHING IS


Only the lost who keep seeking that space where nothing is
may call it home. But which of us is lost: you,
blind angel aiming for the heart, or me, needing
to receive your freezing burn as love?
Can you feel my human heat flickering with animal dreams?
The space between us is immense, clear as wind,
opaque as grains of empty lives. And borders we can’t see
or hear are porous with our griefs and joys in time
that keeps us bundled in its darkness.
Maybe that’s as close to clouds as we can be,
crossing through murky, unseen frigid worlds
beyond the sun. Your lightest breath now enters me
and penetrates a core I cannot know
or reach myself. Only it takes me, and I have to go.

SWINGING NEAR DARK


On my walk by the river I heard
the creaking of a swing
in a small playground
and saw in late dusk a girl riding
back and forth, her legs
pumping, hair streaming
in the damp breeze
traveling God knows where
it didn’t matter, swinging above the river
of night, flying—who knows
why we come
to live for such moments.

CATTAILS


Sentries, you stand 
guarding the everlasting 
movement of the hazel waterway
& nest in the middle
of the bayberry on the bank.

Your seed fluff comes unbidden,
oozes out your pods
to fly, line nests & make beds 
for the living & dead.

Speaking in wooly fibers 
& strands I too hold
in my being. It has 
no place but what it leaves, 
who it touches

like the mossy rug I walk past
that lies on the bank, 
almost mistaking it for a sleeping dog, 
a dog that says yes—
I am where you last touched me.

IN A GUST

Under the oak tinged red 
in the front yard at 5 AM, I stand 
barefoot in the wet grass, a cup 
of hot coffee in my hands, 
my family and friends buried 
in their dreams, worries, 
uncertainties. And I 
in mine. But then in a gust 
the chimes’ deep tones 
take me back 
to the moment years ago,
while caring for my dying father,
I drew up the shade to see 
above the street at dawn 
the wires all illuminated—
the leaves ecstatic—
the ineffable dance 
has no human counterpart.

FOUND AMONG THE LOST


Not my glove but my empty hand.
Not my empty hand, but the opening
in a pocket where the chill slips through.
A ring, a necklace with its gold
medallion, the last watch
my grandfather bought me, my grandmother without
saying goodbye.
Papers recording the passages
of those I loved. Papers that crumble
at a touch found
in the drawer of a forgotten desk.
Beside a bench in the cemetery, among
the patches of moss, white violets. A flutter
without a voice or name—
Not bewilderment
but breath of the wounded, unrequited,
rising. Not lost but given the scent
of what blossoms.
A corner where one can come
and go. Places for the soul to lie down
and be gathered.

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Barbara Siegel Carlson is the author of four books of poetry, most recently "Current" published by Lily Poetry Review Books, 2026. Her previous books are "What Drifted Here," "Once in Every Language" and "Fire Road." She is the co-translator (with Ana Jelnikar) of "Look Back, Look Ahead, Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel." Her poetry and translations have appeared in On the Seawall, Verse Daily, Mid-American Review, Salamander, 2River, The Poetry Porch and other journals. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Carlson is a Poetry in Translation Editor of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices. She lives in Carver, Massachusetts. More at barbarasiegelcarlson.com. 

Her poems "Where Nothing Is" and "Swinging Near Dark" first appeared in The Poetry Porch; her poem "Found Among the Lost" first appeared in 2River.

✡️

Five Tiny Delights:

1. The first sip of morning coffee;
2. Walking in the woods and around the cranberry bogs;  
3. Walking in the woods after a rainstorm; 
4. Looking at the clouds; and
5. My cat purring in my lap

Five Tiny Jewish Delights:

1. Lighting Shabbat candles;
2. Lighting Hannukah candles and singing the blessings with my family;
3. Remembering the prayers I had to memorize as a child;
4. Celebrating Passover with my family; and
5. Making and sharing my mother’s Passover peachy upside-down cake after finding the recipe I thought was lost.

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