light is sparse this morning
so let it come slowly,
a sifting upwards
of gold, diffuse
through wind-bent trees
let morning be hesitant –
with time, nothing
will be left out in darkness
© Sarah Whiteley
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it was as if all of every summer’s heat
had sunk into the worn boards of the porch
twenty years ago and I would do more
than simply sit beside you and tell tales
but here and twenty years backwards, I’ll admit
to seeing the lapsed possibility of home in you –
how the porchlight cradles your laughter
and not so much the door I can’t rush out of
without thinking if I’d only known you then
we would have been that much more
even in leaving, you’re all and everything
though everything arrives too late
even my feet, in finding their way away,
feel the impossible promise of you
© Sarah Whiteley
the house finches have
changed their song again –
to one of fierce joy,
of emphatic nest-lust
it seems almost too soon
for such passion,
with snow still gathered,
blue in the shadows
of the north-facing stones
then again, some songs exist
simply to remind us
it may never be too soon,
yet sometimes it is
quite plainly too late
© Sarah Whiteley
have you seen how hope
gathers at the edge of pain?
how like first light, it graces
the thin lip of the ridge
before sweeping wholesale
down the slope?
how sometimes it is slow
to gather, and even slower
to rise up over the noise
of our daily just-eking-by?
love, too, is like this –
it should spill over like time
that can’t be bound by hours,
it should shake your petals
© Sarah Whiteley
love remaining half-asked,
with an exile’s hunger,
what have you lost?
smoke never stops moving,
alters nothing, and
leaves irretrievably
when exactly does time
distill us down to fire?
down to accumulated passion?
at what point have we traded
the marked directions
of known constellations
for the possible light
of far, unseen stars?
I carry with me every touch,
each quiet sigh released
beside you, and have lost
precisely nothing
© Sarah Whiteley
brown drifts of coffee grounds,
and the tappings of the black-capped chickadee
finding rhythm with the tick-ticking
of spring rain on new-green locust leaves
the passing hours mold the morning
into the firmer lines of day,
tracing the flights of fugitive birds –
red hawk, wren, house finch, crow,
ubiquitous dust-winged sparrow
shadows lazily skate and shift,
thumbing plants and spines of books,
shelves graced with inconsequential treasures –
of feather, stone, and sloping shell
the peonies on the window,
barely beyond their prime,
settle into fading brilliance
with unabashed aplomb
and if it might seem I forget you
amidst this gentle roster –
you’re the one, though absent,
who gives the hours their reason
and this simple room, its light
© Sarah Whiteley
we say goodnight,
then goodnight,
and once more a goodnight
of softening kisses –
just as the dawn
cracks the night
I count the hours of you
that remain to me,
and tuck them about us –
thin comfort against
the coming light
© Sarah Whiteley
I would bury them,
my sorrows,
deep into the loam –
into the comfort
of earth, and dark,
and waiting
I would bury them,
these burdens,
beneath the roots
of the locust that
stood as witness
to their birth
I would bury them,
my troubles,
close by where I’ll see
come the spring
these troubles become
more beautiful things
© Sarah Whiteley
the gulls face the waves
perched on their own reflections
water reaches
nothing is washed away
except time from this day
© Sarah Whiteley
we were, for a time,
each other’s clocks –
the tick-ticking of
our fingers apart,
counting the breaths
before between until –
until
2 AM yearning strikes,
hungry as bells on Sunday –
and we unwind, reset,
sweep the seconds
from our faces,
cheeks to shoulders
for a minute
how I swallowed
every moment,
even the ones
empty
of
you,
and sired a void
within the void
© Sarah Whiteley
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