When you think of her one day,say, twenty years after you last saw her,and you had heard she let her hair gosnow white at age forty-somethingand you wonder if she's still workingand how old the twins are now. When you discover a trail the same daythat you didn't know anything aboutand it leads you across… Continue reading Synchronicity
Author: Sally Sandler
Sally Sandler is a poet, biographer and children's book author.
An Old Woman Answers
Ask me my age and I'll tell you to startby counting the smile linescreasing my face;when that’s not enough,the cracks in my heart— sure, you can’t see thembut here in my chestthey ache like broken bonesfor old loves, for all the lost mothers,all the dogs gone; count all my gray hairs,count all my scars—the purple ones, too,where babies once… Continue reading An Old Woman Answers
Losing Things
(A hasty bit of fun, in the style of Poet Laureate Billy Collins, not my usual at all, but sometimes we need the lighthearted): .................. I might as well begin by sayingI’ve lost my keys again.It’s the second time this monthwhen you get right down to it. Poets often write about losing things—like life and… Continue reading Losing Things
To Our Beloved Dog on Your Last Day
I wonder if you understandwhy my voice is low and broken,why we tiptoe through the house,what hangs in the air, unspoken, why we softly shut a door,close the kitchen drawers more slow,and like a final offeringplace the breakfast in your bowl. Why the boy and young girl pausejust before they leave for schooland look behind… Continue reading To Our Beloved Dog on Your Last Day
Election 2020: An Allegory
It was a bloodless kill—the copper hammer barburied like fate and still gripping his flattened neck.One quick snapof an old wooden trap, the word “Victor”painted bright redjust below the spring and the trip hanging loose,the rat hanging dead.His eyes were black as unlit lamps,their fuse burned outin the metal of night just after we twistedthe… Continue reading Election 2020: An Allegory
Something about a Boardwalk
reaching over a salt marshthat invites me to hoverabove the great tangle of earthlike a mote that floatsover the madness. A bit of architecturethe forest offers of itself surrendering its sun-bleachedcedar smell up throughmy pilgrim feet, the perfect warmthof horizontal planksfragrant as the woodin a Swedish sauna whereI huddle naked, small. Here a mallard paddles… Continue reading Something about a Boardwalk
To Know Something Certain
Across the lagoon, it’s a snowy egret I seestanding with one leg bent like a brokenhanger, foot like a child's yellow boot. I know this for a fact because I’ve just now read thatthe snowy egret has a black bill and yellow feetand the larger great egret is reversed. And to remember this particular bird… Continue reading To Know Something Certain
What I Remember
are mournful gulls,the hollow clang of lobster boat bells,the cloak of November melancholy misting over a small harbor town,a place facing backward at Pleistocene tides,at gravity’s pull on the moon and the sea. I often felt sad at my parents' home.When my plane touched down, I sank in the cold,the constant swashing ebbing and flowthat… Continue reading What I Remember
Making Peace
Sometimes when you look for peaceyou gaze at the Pacific where you see the absenceof dishonesty, war, racism, borders. You see a world rinsed cleanof anger and man-made scars. I close my eyes to see my peace:an imagined cabin under the stars steeped in the wood smell of old smoldering ash, around me a flying geese quilt tight as a… Continue reading Making Peace
Lesson from a Giant Swallowtail
I've been expecting himsince his mother scatteredhurried shadows overthe orange tree two weeks ago.Still, when it comes, his reveal is sudden as the lightning boltson his velvet wings,the morning mist nearlyconcealing his midnight black,his Fred Astaire elegance. But this is 2020, a yearthat staggers to the endholding its head in its hands,and even his butterflyperfection… Continue reading Lesson from a Giant Swallowtail