Poet Showcase- Sarah Zale
Three Poems by Sarah Zale from her collection of women's biographies titled: Crescent Moons: The Reflections of Women At Sea
The Writer
They are not for reading, the words
she writes day by day
of the voices that speak to her asking
for a place on the page.
The paper is fine, a weave of cotton,
not white but pale blue
she marks with a nib of ink-
a comma and she sees a bird
dip its wing, a whale's dorsal fin,
the tip of a braid as a child flees.
She hears a voice out of breath
unable to finish her sentence.
She writes a, the first letter, the first
word, of line giving birth to round,
of soft sidling up against strong, of face
against hand, the moon against night.
Next an h, ah, as sister sits next to sister
and woman stands next to man, as tall
looms over child, as the young imagine
love, as anger pushes at breeze and old
totters to new, as stone ponders flower
the story is nearly told, the words ready
to print for those who know how to read
what she writes on the page.
Eyes like Cold Peas
He touched her there
when she was too young to know
some touches are sweet
as yams
and others
chicory bitter
that sit on a child's plate
like cold peas
she wraps in a napkin
when no one is looking
and throws them away.
"Eat," he says, watching
her eyes. The peas roll
across her tongue
and linger in her throat.
"May I be excused?"
she asks. "I
have swallowed everything
you put on my plate.
I will digest it over the years."
But she remembers
only napkins
and cannot answer why
it is so hard to swallow
why
all eyes are like eyes at a table
cold
she has rolled back and forth
across her plate
for years.
Real is Wet
Sanity and song
and sensuous need
sleep deep in a sea palm weed, we are
salmon-eyed, yin and yang, on a course
in both directions, concave to convex
lunate forms, we jibe our way from shore
as those who resist list at the sand
awed by the flukes of our rise.
Our guise belies--
O crescent moons!
we know that we are full.
Real is wet and wind
and the nape of a wave,
a roux of spray and salt
on skin, is seeing
all that is sacred
in the play of wind on water.
