Storyteller Poetry Review has just published 5 of my poems about my wonderful mother-in-law. Some have been published before; some are first-timers. My thanks to editor Sharon Knutson for this opportunity to share an extraordinary life.
https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2025/05/honoring-mother-in-law-part-2.html
A second poem published in Red Eft Review.
Bird Woman
Nearing the shore at twilight,
she drifts in the wind’s current.
The lagoon below is still
as held breath.
Her eyes skirt the trees,
the marshy undergrowth
for a safe settling.
She tires easily now,
seeks sheltered landings
on timeworn wings,
her flight nearing
an unfamiliar shore
that beckons
with no promises.
Just had THREE poems picked up at the wonderful Rusty Truck. Thanks, Scot! Here’s the first one.
All that Remains
I rush upstairs when it starts, rain and wind
pummeling the old apple tree, branches cracking.
I had opened the windows wide this morning—
airing out, Mom called it—letting the stale of winter
escape into April. Now this—a storm threshing
the forsythia, shredding yellow blossoms on the lawn.
The landscape blurs through windows as I close them,
drops filling small pores in the screens, collecting dust
in muddy puddles on the sill. There’d been a storm like this
the day Mom was buried. It hurried the pastor’s homily,
made a mire of dirt, fresh-turned beside the grave. I thought
how Dad and I were like the gray, beading drops as we stood
bare-headed, not touching; how we evaporated that day
leaving only grime on the sill.
My poem “Leavings” was just published by Silver Birch Press. I’ll post the poem here, as well as a link to the Silver Birch site. On the site, I tell a little bit about writing the poem.
Leavings are untidy. Remembering
what you want to say as the car pulls away,
or the cell phone drops into your purse,
restraint in an embrace, the casual
see ya, when you ache for more.
There was that time my mother died—
a stiff, proud woman who did not touch.
She lay in bed, while her brothers and I
hovered. We asked if she needed a blanket,
if she wanted music, if she were hungry,
thirsty. At each offering, she jerked her head
from side to side, tight-lipped, angry.
Then the young, Hispanic hospice aide reached
out and took her hand. She knew what leavings
needed, what my mother couldn’t bring herself
to ask for, what we didn’t understand to give.
My mother sighed and held that gentle,
reassuring hand. The aide leaned in, caressed
a wisp of hair on her forehead. My mother smiled,
and took her last breaths.
My friend and fellow State College Poetry Workshop colleague Steve Deutsch received a 2018 Pushcart nomination for this incredible poem recalling a friend and the Vietnam War. Please visit Steve’s blog Stevieslaw to leave a comment.
I found your first book today
in a second hand store at the Harrisburg Station.
Dingy and age-tanned,
it retained its dustcover,
with a photo of you at 22,
wearing a threadbare corduroy coat
I’m sure is still in your closet,
and what might pass for a smile.
It’s a rare first print from ‘69.
My war.
Your deferment.
You kept to your poetry
like you kept to the old neighborhood,
both mired in bottonless poverty—
an endless scraping by.
Yet, just last year, The Times called you
the Bashful Bard of Brooklyn.
We will lay you out tomorrow
in a sandy plot
in one of those many cemeteries
that dot the flat, emptiness of the mid-island plains.
Bury you next to Mary
your common-law wife of fifty three years
and your only treasure.
Old friend,
I never told you what I felt
when I first held a copy of your book.
I was outside my tent,
less than a mile from the wreckage of Ben Tre.
The package had been waiting for me
while we took that city down.
Not even the rats and the roaches
could have survived our fury.
”That should be me,” I thought,
and tossed that splendid book
on the residue of war.
Steven Deutsch
First published in Eclectica
“Poetry is . . . emotion recollected in tranquility.”
― William Wordsworth
I found his obit on Google,
hadn’t seen him, barely thought
of him in forty years
since the day he loaded his car
with half of everything – blankets, pillows,
dishes, albums (we fought over
who’d get “The Graduate” poster of Hoffman
and Anne Bancroft’s leg) – and drove off
to I-didn’t-care-where.
Once, 20 years later I learned where he was
from his buddy John and called.
He still taught drama and directed
summer stock in a small midwestern town.
We laughed together, comfortable,
finally, in our separate skins.
Now an obit with pictures and two columns
in the paper. A well-loved, prominent citizen,
it read, wife, three kids, grandkids. He wrote
a children’s book and “left the town
with memories of comedy and drama
that enriched our lives.”
Our marriage wasn’t mentioned. No need,
I suppose – a youthful take off
and crash landing best forgotten. But I wish
I had a chance to say goodbye.
– Sarah Russell
First published by Silver Birch
a dead spider sways in silk threads
with mummied gnats and flies
food for eternity
– Sarah Russell
First published in Three Line Poetry
dust the ferns with my ashes —
there, among the aspen
trembling gold against the sky.
Let them settle, sighing,
on the still warm earth of autumn
where the next peak calls your name.
Snow will come. The wind will show me
paths the doe and vixen know. The moon
will call me with her crescent mouth
and share stories of the embered stars.
– Sarah Russell
First published in Poppy Road Review
“They haven’t dug the grave yet.”
Mom insisted on coming to the cemetery
after her best friend Dorothy’s viewing.
“The funeral’s not ’til 2 tomorrow,” I said.
“They’ll dig it in the morning.”
“They should have it dug,” she fussed.
Mom is a farm woman, used to death.
She turned ninety in the fall,
and Dorothy was her last good friend
in the tiny delta town where children leave
for jobs or school or just to escape the soy
and cotton. Her church has only twenty members
now — old women who show off corsages
on Mother’s Day and sometimes cajole their men
to come in overalls and slicked-back hair.
Dorothy and Mom taught Bible study, went to Eastern Star
and bingo, traded recipes and gossip.
Mom killed a rabid skunk in Dorothy’s yard
with the double barrel she keeps under the bed,
and Dorothy came to quilt on Wednesdays –
just the two of them since the other three passed on.
“Why’s it important to see the empty grave?” I asked.
“I need to know she’ll be comfortable,” Mom said.
“I know she’d do the same for me.”
– Sarah Russell
First published in On the Veranda
My friend Ryan Stone has a poem in the August issue of Red River Review. I’ll reprint the poem as well as links both to his blog, Days of Stone, and to the journal. Many fine poems on both venues.
Although science, with clinical wisdom
declared her not yet a person,
a heartbeat argued defiantly
for a night.
We visit the cemetery —
hands entwined, minds
in different hemispheres,
hearts mangled. In a quiet corner
where the sun lingers late in summer,
where gelid moans soften in winter,
we become broken pieces
of something once much stronger.
– Ryan Stone
Sarah Russell Poetry 