The garden was leviathan no doubt when seen through your baby lizard eyes, with leaves the length of galleons afloat in the jacuzzi, a sea by its size. You chose to take sudden soundless flight into the humid draw of depths too deep, all one-plus inches of you, in breathless night and silent as a… Continue reading To a Tiny Miracle, Found
Author: Sally Sandler
Sally Sandler is a poet, biographer and children's book author.
Wings into Glass: The Yellow Warbler, Part II
Please don’t mourn or pity my brief hold on this earth, like something frail or fine. When I’m buried, say this life of mine was more than striking glass and falling gold. My home was at the edges of the sky where time was as carefree as a breeze. And I became the envy… Continue reading Wings into Glass: The Yellow Warbler, Part II
Leaning East
The past has all blown east. The Monterey cypress felt it leave in the teeth of a Pacific sea squall. Ever since, the cypress has leaned east toward the past with outstretched arms. Somedays I am that cypress. Wind buffeted, whale boned, sway backed and salt bleached. I was thrust off-center in my cambium, and… Continue reading Leaning East
Midnight Transformation
When the need came for me to fly I pictured a juvenile red-tailed hawk, her gray feathers fingering rising air, playing the nocturne of her flight. Soon afterward contractions began; I severed the cord that held me since birth and breast stroked through the sea heavy air. See me? I'm flying! I shout to a nest of vipers,… Continue reading Midnight Transformation
To Radiate, Even Briefly
Deep beneath the sea, in a bed of sand, a tiny pufferfish flaps tail and fins and labors over cryptic hills and bands and valleys, and with burrowing begins his DaVinci: Perfect geometry of circle and furrow, radial lines all adorned with shells, in symmetry as if the Master's hand guides his design. With luck… Continue reading To Radiate, Even Briefly
Figments
There is a cabin that doesn't exist, and hides in a wilderness of pine. I count the moss covered stairs that I climb to escape there—ten steps into the mist. So many times I've opened its door to peace, to be alone with my breath and try to get over my fears of death—… Continue reading Figments
Willow and Bark
Her name is June, though she's willow as spring. I am coast live oak in the fall. She is a dimple in milk-glass skin. I am skin corrugated like bark. We sail a butterfly kite at the beach; when she cartwheels, her hair anoints the sand. I pace myself and search for its offerings— bi-valve… Continue reading Willow and Bark
To a Hawk Mantling
Mantling: When birds of prey hunch their shoulders and spread their wings over a kill to keep it hidden from other predators. To a Hawk Mantling It all comes down to this harrier hawk, and a vision intense as the smell of bleeding. It comes to the rabbit under her wings, a creature that moments ago was breathing.… Continue reading To a Hawk Mantling
What Happens Next? You Asked Me That Night
As I knelt by your head, held your long fingers and dripped the morphine under your tongue. When you are ready, follow the light. But later I wished I had asked him instead: Where are you now, my Father, my friend? Are you an elder in opiate dreams, with prayers like ghosts hovering over your bed? Are… Continue reading What Happens Next? You Asked Me That Night
Teach Your Children Well
Make sure they find mica in the ground— pinch the rock skin peeled and browned, the waxy, starry silicate layered like staircases in granite. Make certain they sample honeysuckle that grips a country fence, and they suck all the nectar from the hair-thin stopper pulled from inside, a party popper. Make sure they… Continue reading Teach Your Children Well