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
Author: Sally Sandler
Sally Sandler is a poet, biographer and children's book author.
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
Innocence and White Windowsills
It's sold now, the house on a distant hill, and the gulls are but echoes in my ears, the cistern of the harbor tipped and spilled, the limestone cliffs sundered by the years. I think about its white windowsills, the horizon edged in clean enamel paint— each a testament to Yankee will, invoking the… Continue reading Innocence and White Windowsills
Flat as a Prairie Is My Soul
Flat as a prairie is my soul— without canyon, without crest or cliff or hill to climb and stroll. Now that death has taken toll, flat is all that I have left— and dry: My tears have all been cried, my eyes are dry as prairie sand, empty of the liquid stars that shined… Continue reading Flat as a Prairie Is My Soul
Elegy for the Elephant
Tell me again how the grassland swayed as if in worship, waving to sky whenever the mute-footed giants walked by, and tell of the mountains on earth they made. Of how they left footprints around their graves from pacing with grief as deep as muddy rivers—and how they bowed to the bloodied ground. Remind… Continue reading Elegy for the Elephant
Why I’ll Never See Him Again
Because of a single juniper tree. Because of a 30-foot tree, and black ice. Because of a blue SUV, some black ice, and a juniper known as an Eastern red cedar. Because he drove with his eyelids half-mast alone in a narrow peninsula of thought. Because maybe far from the ice and the tree… Continue reading Why I’ll Never See Him Again
Putting on My Mother’s Face
It’s only 6:45 a.m. You’re early today, looking back at me when I squint in the mirror above the sink, wearing that zippered robe, smearing cold cream on lips to remove your face before you put your face back on. Remember we had the same sable eyes, until one of mine faded to green—yours… Continue reading Putting on My Mother’s Face
Wish I Didn’t Know Now
“Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.” -Bob Seger, Singer/Songwriter, “Against the Wind” That our generation naively assumed that change was due, the status quo doomed. And now life ends without a boom and barely a whimper—often too soon, and in the algorithm a debt to Mother Earth, from acute neglect.… Continue reading Wish I Didn’t Know Now