touching bottom

I cannot keep these days from sinking –
thirty-four years away, I awake
to the smell of lake water
and its soft slaps against the poles
of the dock, the wood on aluminum
of oars caught in oarlocks

three and more decades gone, and I know
with certainty that the lake bottom
is still sandy, and that at twilight,
two loons will arrive – carved from
a perfect summer night – to begin their calls
with rising chortles pulled into those
longer notes that seek out our edges,
indistinguishable from the edges of the sky

thirty-four years back, I might return
and instruct that wide-eyed summer self
to plant her heart in that space,
where it might quietly wait with the pines,
with the dry sighs of summer grasses,
and the smooth leaves of the wintergreen –
for some other sun-quivering July day,
when her feet can touch bottom again

© Sarah Whiteley

the accordion

whether the accordion stays or goes
becomes a matter of friendship –
and of the necessity or needlessness
of tokens of attachment

a heavy load can make for a longer road,
and other favors await a verdict –
whether box or bin, either out or in,
feeling and hand both hesitate

though the heart of the gift remains whole
in spite of this inquest –
true affection demands no keepsakes,
and gathers no dust on its bellows

© Sarah Whiteley

I am in the midst of downsizing for the big move next month. I find the days sliding by at an alarming rate, with still so much to do. It will all get done, I am certain – after much hard work and lots of letting go of the things I truly do not need. Whether the accordion makes the move with me? I’ll be sure to let you know. 🙂

resolution

lately I have been
preoccupied with ghosts –

with the dust that
follows me from old roads

without wind, three pines
lean hard on a sister and groan –

the sound finds me
even after they fall

© Sarah Whiteley

Ophelia on the dash

I can’t see a Buick these days
without recalling crawling in
through the driver’s side window –

for nearly 8,000 miles
that rubber worshiped roads
with Ophelia on the dash,
the trucks blaring as we passed

she was more cause than cat,
and once walked the split-rail
on the edge of a canyon while
the khaki families stared

criss-crossing 17 states,
we were never lost together –
only ever found making a beeline
for the next rich horizon,

calling home all those roads
that everyone else forgot

© Sarah Whiteley

I’ve been longing for an old-fashioned road trip lately, and it seems like the bug doesn’t hit without also missing my partner in crime from all those years ago. Ophelia was a Maine Coon kitten pulled from a trash dumpster who would grow up seeing the country from the dash of my old Buick. I sat down the other day and tried to figure out just how many miles we’d seen together, and I can say I traveled with that cat for further than I have with any human.

sleeping bears

sometimes, between the long span
of months in which I do not
think of you at all,
I briefly consider calling you up
to ask you along for a hike

for a moment, not thinking how
having you there would so alter
the trail, that what lies before
would amount to steadfast avoidance
of what should be left behind

sometimes I consider calling you,
but let’s leave it there –
leave it as we would a sleeping bear
without the thaw of spring to shake
the old frosts from her fur

© Sarah Whiteley

*

thinking of those days behind the wheel, cat stretched across the dash, exemption stretched out along straight, gray highways

trying now not to swallow that hook, though lately it seems the city hates me, shoves me toward her swilled-to-the-gill gutters

back then, there was the bag kept in the back and it didn’t matter that I had to crawl through the driver’s side window to get back behind the wheel

what mattered was the chance to get out of here, wherever “here” happened to be at that moment, and now it feels that “here” is now once more

and I miss that cat more than ever

© Sarah Whiteley

at Sleepy Eye

days stretched out so long, they toppled
off the end of the weathered dock
into the spring-fed cold at Sleepy Eye

among the shadows between the pilings
swam the uncatchable ghost of a walleye
(suitably fish-tale-sized)
someone years past had called Walter

every summer we saw him jump,
breaking the lake at dusk, just offshore
where the small-flies gathered
in their short-lived, tiny-winged hordes

at the splash “it’s Walter!”
we’d gasp and sit properly awed
while we envisioned the sort of net
that might finally nab him

the “growed-up” me is somewhat relieved
Walter’s remained a fish-ish myth,
dodging all the efforts and lures
of the great northern fisherman

this way, he’s stayed a childhood tale –
of firefly nights among hundred-year pines
and the hollow sound of wooden oars
striking the sides of a kid-captained boat

© Sarah Whiteley

the more brilliant gleam

I imagine sometimes
how it must be between you
and when it comes down to it
I am more than half-certain
that her spark, being
the nearer glow, is far
brighter than any feeble light
that now reaches you
from our own obscured
constellation
though I think perhaps
there are still moments
as when chill winter spurs
the stars to shine
with greater radiance
and for the briefest of beats
your eyes might rise
in sudden remembrance
as the ghost of my lips thieves
the breath from yours,
when you recall how once
the night contained
us both together
and that we were by bounds
the more brilliant gleam

© Sarah Whiteley

a winter life

I have not
dusted them away
those days
like daffodils in December
they lie quietly
below snowy crusts
nestled deep down
in the dormant dark
beneath sparrows’
flittering feet
whose beaks seek out
the forgotten seeds
of some summer
come the day
when I am old
and remembering perhaps
what spring once was
recalling
with a clarity of mind
only long years
can provide
I will brush aside
the snow
sweep away
the layers of leaves
and dried-up weeds
time has piled
upon us
and coax the days
into greening
once more

© Sarah Whiteley

autumn hush

round the hushful green
greener even
for the dying drifts
of leaves’ last hurrah
crows gather and glide
trailing darker days behind
the crisp skim of feet
over tiny yellow moments
the birches tick off
spates of time that fall
with the rusted petals
of the last late roses
brittle with the day’s demise
moon’s crescent smiles
ablaze with her secret
for her stars breathe brighter
when winter’s lull descends

© Sarah Whiteley

…with a nod to Mr. Lew and his smiling moon…