BROWSE Columns
✕
The difference between sigh and breath
politician and dustpan —
that is the work of muralists
not I ( i ) who read & two pages later
realize my mind is somewhere else.
I sense a concordance between inspiration and defecation,
sum and enough, matter and enemy, clarity
and wit. All on an unsteady walk through a serrated
morning. A mumble of evidence defines (flight/no footfalls).
Bewildered, sunflowers
break through the roofs of hothouses
while outside, lobelia dies slowly of thirst.
Then wind knocks the sunflowers over.
Longing, wild, shadowy dreams,
chartreuse snakes in cat o’ nine tails by
the water, and you, you jousting
wonder in the fringe where you saw
white streaks in the sky
trace the arc of planes carrying
destinations, matter, hours.
I tell you, as you repel my explanation, that
the glidepath of history, so called,
is
as indistinguishable from sorcery as
a dragonfly’s translucent wings
in the milkweed pocket,
swivels and its tiny eye turns
air to light.
Ellen Sander currently lives in Belfast, Maine, by way of New York, Bolinas, Venice Beach, Beijing and points between. She is a past poet Laureate of Belfast, and a first wave rock journalist. Her nonfic Trips, Rock Life in the Sixties is reissued by Dover in an enhanced edition. She hosts a radio show, a writing group and a bedazzle of wild birds at the feeder outside her study window. Her most recent poetry collection, Aquifer, is published by Red Bird Chapbooks.
