I remember, when I run into you again,
balancing on the edge of the cracked sidewalk,
how much I wanted to like you
even more than I already did
all I hear is nothing you actually said –
everything else is street noise
© Sarah Whiteley
I don’t often write romance into my poetry these days. But in honor of Valentine’s Day, I’ll dust this one off. ❤
the boat of course is metaphor
though it is, undeniably, night
and fingers do trail over the side,
but also over stern and bow
it is also true that we do move as water –
that hair cascades and skin ripples
but that again is metaphor,
for which I am unapologetic
and I cannot be at all contrite
for not minding stirring up depths
or were we to drown together
beneath the moon’s regard
in fact, my heart, that may be all
that is certain and indisputable
© Sarah Whiteley
there is no finer promise
than the uncertain light
which finds you
from between the blinds
and casts you
in bewitching blue –
a hue into which my hands
are driven to dive –
pulling the pearl
from the shadow
© Sarah Whiteley
you were new
as buttercups
in April,
silent as a spill
of church-light
on the grass
though I felt it
in my own throat –
your breath
and that sweet,
augural hitch
as I passed
© Sarah Whiteley
I perched there – my hands,
my words, undelivered,
on the edge of the porch –
I could not be otherwise,
though you were a hand’s-breadth,
(a breath’s-breadth) away
why leap only to be denuded,
disabused of what I’d only hoped
your hands had meant?
perhaps I’ve spread
the interpretation of your touch
ridiculously thin,
and shaped only future regret
© Sarah Whiteley
the moon has captured me
by the ankles, is
crawling through me
and I must burst
into new surfaces
this morning my hands
awoke, and for the first
time in years, ached
to find something other
than air beside them
but even without
the solid press of
your arm on mine, I
have found wonder in this
upended cup of stars
© Sarah Whiteley
I am a bewilderment
of limbs –
a profusion
of uncomfortable truths –
and as a result,
am ungainly beside you
all twisted fingers
and benumbed tongue
but lit up inside
by fireflies
© Sarah Whiteley
that I was I
and you were you
and want being
what it is –
shortening
the shortest
distance between
two selves –
with the brevity
of “yes”
we were quite
suddenly we
and with nothing
but combustion
in between
© Sarah Whiteley
I have stumbled
upon the occasion
of your lips
and wander wondrously
betwixt – bewitched
© Sarah Whiteley
Just a quick note to say I’m still writing. But I’ve also been keeping myself busy with composing a new piece of music – I know! the first in quite some time! So if posts are tapering off, that’s why.
Also, I am quickly heading into the fall busy season at work (like being sucked into a black hole) but I am determined to keep up some form of creative pursuit in spite of the brutal days. Normally I would say “see you on the other side” in another couple of weeks, but I think I’ll just let what happens happen – and if I can squeeze out a few pieces of poetry in the melee, then so be it.
And stay tuned later this month for a little giveaway! Who doesn’t like free stuff?!
I have called your bones mine,
and pulled your limbs about me,
so that I might (in darkness)
be taken for the beating core of you –
the same delight that lies in curling
vine-like (rapacious green) through branches
toward some finer, higher light
pulses in the throat, a growing thing
that rises and places its pleasures
in that nook of you, which is me,
so that I might (in reverence)
be taken for the vehement shine of you
© Sarah Whiteley
ebbtide 