I indulge in bitterness
But sweeten it with song

Like the bittern in the birdbook
Floating on the algal pond.

The fountainhead
Sadnesses

Keep springing from
Is deep in the sodden sod.

Dark as dark, light as light,
We are all, and we are flawed.

Dylan Carpenter lives in Baltimore, where he is an instructor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Poems from this sequence appear, or are forthcoming, in Ninth Letter, The Iowa Review Online, The Seattle Review, and other journals.