The Runaway, by Donna Carnes

The Stairs of Montmartre, photography by Brassai (France, b. Romania) 1936

The Runaway 
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A tumbling hillside holds her hidden steps, 
which echo through uncertain drifting dawn,  
while shadowed streetlamps sleep with old regrets,  
wrapped in riled dreams of roaming honeyed fawns, 
who caught in backlit sudden spilling sun,  
with rounded eyes fall-down in fading noon,  
waking veiled midnight, then to come undone - 
moonbeams lying shattered in a gnarled rune. 
But tumbling hillsides hold forgotten paths,  
which hedged in quiet starlight mark a way, 
to lead her homeward through a looking glass, 
listening to her unnamed young soul say: 
I know with every burning breath I can, 
be more than what I am ~ walk on again.

​Donna Carnes

Donna Carnes is an imagist, en plein air poet. She writes in diverse poetic forms, including freestyle, villanelle, pantoum, sonnet, haiku and haibun. Her poetry is shaped by the geography and culture of her childhood and adult life. Carnes was born in Chicago, Ill., spent her toddler years in the Pacific Northwest, and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. She studied and worked in England for several years, and lived for decades in San Francisco, CA. She particularly enjoys plein air writing in winter light and during the end-of-day blue hour. Over the past 18 years, Carnes’ poems have been in numerous exhibits with artists, in articles, and in radio interviews and poetry readings. Her most recent book is All About the Light, Poems & Paintings (Donna Carnes poet and Jan Norsetter painter; Two Goddesses Press, November, 2024). 
 
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