certain books stay hidden –
those in which loss and love
exist without conclusion
and at times I may crack them –
draw new maps to old places,
new creatures of known constellations,
and let the moon out into the room
once more, to rest on shoulders
that can bear the additional gravity
a tolerable price to pay
for the pen to be able to say
“I survive! I survive! I survive!”
© Sarah Whiteley
should they ask,
I have gone to blue,
I have gone to green stillnesses,
to the bright-lipped lake
where the reeds still recall
that the wanting is often
greater than ever the having,
and that some days the rift
is only the start
of a different-directioned journey
so should they ask,
I have gone back,
back to the tranquilities,
back to the waters as they were,
and as they may someday be
tell them I have gone to blue
© Sarah Whiteley
it was late November
when I drove toward Maine
I still hear how the wind
tore across the highway,
rattling doors and nearly
blowing that tired red Buick
into the frozen ditch
I had second, third – hell
sixth thoughts on the other
side of the state line,
but I kept right on –
forward was the only
way left even though
the pines all pointed
back the other direction
a body ought to listen
to things like weather
and the wind and when
either one isn’t at your back,
it might be that’s a sign
you should turn right around
and that just maybe somewhere
down around western Mass
a right instead of that left
might not have inflicted the kinds
of change that would alter the slant
of a year’s share of wakeful nights
but winter’s nothing way up there
if not a lesson, and my toes
nearly froze during that storm
when I tried to find my way
five miles on foot up that hill
to somewhere never home
through fourteen inches of snow
in flimsy shoes with branches
dropping shrapnel all around –
a few other things nearly
froze over, trust included,
and it’s a wonder I thawed
out at all and can carry on
as if it was nothing more
than a freak nor’easter moving
through or a turn in the wrong
direction against the wind’s advice
two hundred or so miles back
down east was the only place
I’ve ever had to lie to live
or pick a lock to save my own skin
five degrees below zero –
twenty minutes spent just chipping
at that ice to use a bent hanger –
something I used to think only
worked in the movies but prayed
to God it could be otherwise
in the end hope won out
and I fled west with a new
appreciation for thick soles
and the warnings pine trees
and a good strong wind
might heap at a vagrant’s feet
but these are the things
I don’t speak of
and thank-the-lord don’t often
think of, save now and again
when a freezing wind
rattles at my windows –
some frenzied remnant
fighting to be let back in
and sometimes –
the old familiar ice still
finds a way beneath the sill
© Sarah Whiteley
Know this is outside of my norm, but have been wanting to clean the cobwebs out of this particular closet for a while now. Wrote this years ago and never posted it as it never felt “right” – but have reached the moment when I’ll tweak and peck it at no more. And in return, it will tweak and peck at ME no more!
I love this now,
and this one,
and the now I carried
with me then,
when stumbling
upon that field
rampant with sunflowers
so bent upon echoing
the brilliancy of day,
they pressed themselves
flush against the belly
of the yellowing sky
and like photographs
of loved ones,
I tuck my nows
between book pages,
so that some days
when I do not like
a particular now,
an old one might come
tumbling out and ask
to sit and reminisce
© Sarah Whiteley
Just a quick thank you for all the support and positive energy around the release of my chapbook, No Direction But Home. I’ve set up a dedicated page (see Available Books above) which provides both a link to Amazon as well as a link to the Paypal option should you wish to have a signed copy.
you steal the breeze
and there is nothing stirring left
to remind me what is breathing
and in the dark hours
the desert trembles green
between the sorrows
and the seams
remembering the silence
of trees and the between-times
the brightness of uncaged stars
and of strangers soundless touching
made unstrange in hunger shared
our hands were perfect maps
of the cracks between our feet
and yet I could not find a way
you are the unfound trail
through still tides
and skies unmoving
you are this
and everything besides
what is breathing
© Sarah Whiteley
the little house nestles
in the yellow grass
ringed round in whirs of songs
of endless summer insects
sits waiting silent in the soughs
quiet in the sweet airs
as they kiss their August songs
against the eaves
around the trees
and all along the stillness
of the white and wondering sills
the little house nestles
in the yellow grass
soft-rimmed in spires
and clamoring climbs
of creamy frothing roses
watches waiting in the hush
the dervish dances
of the dust-winged moths
in the faint radiance
of tumbling summer stars
around the trembling trellis
above the trees
beside the fence
and down the longing traces
of the brown and empty path
the little house nestles
in the yellow grass
watch-guarded by the pines
enshrined in vines
entwined in laurels greener
than the turning arc of spring
who flings her leaves upon the limbs
sits still and mute among the hills
rests soft beneath the dwindling sky
with thoughts of things like wistful wings
whose feathered fingers
brush the eaves
rush up the waiting steps
to sigh entreaties at a door
closed firm upon it all –
the little house nestles
in the yellow grass
sits closed upon the stillness,
and the singing summer sounds
of thrilling trilling insects,
sits closed to dancing moths,
to watching trees and wandering me
who stands in waiting
belating miles away
from the bending yellow grasses
with a pang that even August
will not mend
© Sarah Whiteley
it’s been a year, my dear,
since I shut the garden gate behind
and shooed the wounded dreams away
to trail mournful after happenstance
and the ungraceful slant of those days
no more than small disturbances now
they rustle upon the edges of my feathers
and along the bending tips of my grass
there are no buzzings of bees here
but life, in cat-soft callings ’round the corner,
beckons of fingers held in absentia
and sings of the raveled strings
the intangible things that keep me tethered here
and bound to breathing
mistake not my thanks for fidelity
for I am adroitly adrift
and drift on I shall as vagabond leaves
those flutterings of a different sort
left me out of sorts and circling then
with all its brass-caged “ifs”
I leave their scattered clamorings behind the gate
I rise, I glide, I shifting sift
like last light’s slow-measured lilting
through branches that waver quavery
in the dreamy greens of settling dusk
a year, dear, and I am softer than the silence
unfolding from the star-tilted skies
and sweeter even than the honeysuckle sliver
of the moon that follows me home
and nests in the corner of my window
© Sarah Whiteley
And wham it came upon me – that urge to write. I think for now the lull has passed.
when November finds us
remembering red
processions of poppies
flooding over, up,
between the intrusions
of day’s early dying
the fragile thrall of frosted night
remembering lights
now scattered, dimly lying,
we were adrift once
with petaled profusions
on brighter winds than these
when November finds us
across this brittle distance
deep fields of sea between
the you you were
the I I was
before the burning pull
of your August lips
remember the blazing
pillared paths of hands
the pleasing pulse of poppies
the ruby red hum
of blood in throes of summer
and infinite we
© Sarah Whiteley
in the hollow house
the drapes hang empty
and vases hold dust
where lilacs once were propped
by careful fingers
that chair
has always sat vacant
though the only two who knew
have gone somewhere on
the winds
have scattered weeds
into the garden
where she left rue
and forget-me-nots
at the time
without thinking of regret
or of forgetting
the clouds
have cast his shadow
from the corners
and the rains
have run her fleeting footprints
down the drive
past the evening songs
of the frogs in spring
she’d pass them
listening to the patterns
and plays of drops
on her umbrella
her mind a mass
of green and grey
the encroaching signs
of wandering
and winding wants that wakened
with the awakening earth
they grew so bright and rampant
alongside the buttercups
until her breath was tight
and pained her
and she could no longer
share her air
but there beneath the pine
above the brambles
and the sweet stars
that have long wound themselves
into the grasses
so long as he lies dreaming
she recalls the hollow house
with the crickets calling
beneath the porch
as home
© Sarah Whiteley
you speak
of the ardor of us
as if it still breathed
pulsed between us
lighthouse guide
of our nights
our flighty days
but it’s yesterday’s sighs
then that quivers
to the thready
beats of time passing
when my fingers
lent yours
delightful animation
you speak
of the soul of us
as if we were still
inseparable
as if time and distance
had not piled
against us
diluting us from then,
from when,
from now
© Sarah Whiteley
ebbtide 