Two Poems by Carla Sarett

After hearing Mahler Five
 
Too long, you said of Mahler,
the lone taste we didn't share,
proof that I am separate
apart from the empty chair.
 
But one life's never enough.
In the next, I could show you
my way of hearing Mahler,
you'd come around, I know you.


 
Gathering
 
the door opens
and light reveals
 
the ghostly mites
in flight unbound
 
from me floating
as snow downward
 
to gather with
that truer dust
 
once shed by us
as two, as one
 
united in
radiant space.

Carla Sarett’s recent work appears or is forthcoming in Hobart, Prole, Third Wednesday, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Leaping Clear; and has been nominated for Best American Essay and the Pushcart Prize.  Her debut novel, A Closet Feminist, will be published in 2022.  Carla lives in San Francisco.