The tendons in her hands are creased as the sharp pleats in a paper fan, her fingers bent as a red king crab. Again and again she pushes the silk under the foot of a sewing machine until it flows on the other side sleek as an emerald waterfall. Outside, quiet river boats slip across… Continue reading Old Seamstress in Bangkok
Author: Sally Sandler
Sally Sandler is a poet, biographer and children's book author.
Gift from a Song Sparrow
Perhaps I tend to brood, to overthink a sparrow dying on the glass today— though l admit it took my breath away to find his stiffened body on the deck. But perhaps he was a gift from the sky— an emissary dressed in sparrow brown with broken neck and feet curling down but an urgent… Continue reading Gift from a Song Sparrow
Serial Worrier
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” -Mark Twain Maybe a fire is headed my way— the curious cloud that seems… Continue reading Serial Worrier
To Go Back Home
To find the road that leads back to home— if not in a dream, then maybe at dawn from a dormer window and memory as sharp as arrowheads found by a stream and crisp as our sun-dried sheets—that clean, and fragrant as acres of fresh cut lawn. To leave for home quickly, nighttime or day,… Continue reading To Go Back Home
One Hawk, Two Ways
At first it was a silhouette I saw blacken the asphalt when it slipped above our quiet street, all its claws raked across the timid morning's lips. The sky parted for his swift descent hushed as arrows—just a shudder rose of damp air displaced for death's advance, the morning peace a carcass now exposed. With… Continue reading One Hawk, Two Ways
Stick Together
We watch as the terns flock on the beach— migrants here from their nest places north. They confer in numbers of similar breed in search of food at the edge of the surf. Seizing a moment, a native gull is emboldened and tries in vain to fit in, leaps in the flock and waddles and… Continue reading Stick Together
For Darby and Her Pear Tree
How much longer can this one live? she asks—though she's the expert, not me— the bark is deeply furrowed and dry and already fifty years have gone by and we too have aged along with the tree. It looks so old, she worries aloud, but personally, I feel like we're kin— with bark a mosaic… Continue reading For Darby and Her Pear Tree
The Lie I Tell My Granddaughter
"Why do you care about nature so much?" she asks as we walk through a dry stream bed. The sycamores have surrendered their leaves and I tell her they're deep into winter sleep, though inside I worry for these naked trees— these sentinels of a time that has passed. With careful footing around stream boulders I manage… Continue reading The Lie I Tell My Granddaughter
Power Tools
Lately I'm compelled to cut any tree or shrub I can find that needs me—pomegranate limbs work well, and overzealous rosemary. Because they don't resist, but seem to listen and tolerate the state of regret that sticks to me like pitch from a wounded tree. Because cutting distracts me from senseless mass shootings, and shooting… Continue reading Power Tools
Redemption for a Black Swallowtail
"Hope is the thing with feathers." Emily Dickinson This isn't a butterfly's exodus tale. It's more of a genesis tale about a caterpillar fat with weeks of greed who bowed to the need to be redeemed and bent in prayer… Continue reading Redemption for a Black Swallowtail