Tag: Poem

Night Sounds

Sarah Russell1 Comment

My poem “Night Sounds” was just published by Storyteller Poetry Review in their “Magical, Mystical and Supernatural” series. Thanks to Sharon Knutson, editor. Happy Halloween!

Night Sounds

She tiptoes to the garden
on cricket nights to visit beings
busy in the grass, sycamore and willow,
hidden except for a swoosh, or chortle,
or pounce and small scream.

This night, she settles herself
on a stone in shadows, watches
moonlight tremble through leaves,
breathes moss, larkspur and clover.
Her fingers play with the hem
of her nightie, and she shivers.

Soon, she hears the wind chime cadence
of fairies dancing. The moon casts
a wildflower path to a clearing,
but the sounds drift ahead, out of reach.
She fears she’ll be lost and returns
to her stone in the garden.

Inside her house are loud voices
and sobs and the thud of something
falling. But she hears only the tinkling fairies. 
She knows someday they’ll find her 
and bring her to another garden
where another girl, sitting on a stone,
will hold her hand.

The Wisdom of Wonderland

Sarah Russell6 Comments

My poem was featured this morning on Silver Birch Press. The prompt was “A Stroke of Luck.’ Such fine prompts from Silver Birch. My thanks to Melanie, the editor at Silver Birch.


The Wisdom Of Wonderland

“Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes just one second.”
Lewis Carroll

You looked a little dazed,
like you wondered if you belonged,
a little off-center, nursing a beer
on the patio of that bar in Midtown
where we went to shake out
the work week, before the skip
of the weekend. You looked like the kid
on a playground without a posse,
or a horse for that matter.
You think it was just you who fell
that afternoon. But I knew
I was seeing a lifetime. I just didn’t tell you
because I had to learn to trust first.

First published in I lost summer somewhere


Note: Turns out, that afternoon my future husband had just returned from Nepal. He was jet-lagged and suffering culture shock since he had spent much of the previous decade in Kenya, Malawi, and Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer and trainer. I think I caught him in a weak moment, but our love has lasted 38 years, so we must have known something at a level neither of us truly understood at the time.

“If I Had 3 Lives” is now a song!

Sarah Russell4 Comments

Ruth Benvegnen, who lives in Switzerland and records under the name FistleRoots, contacted me to ask if she could use my poem “If I Had 3 Lives” as the basis of a song. She works in Suno, an app that lets you provide lyrics and pick genre, voices, melody, etc. via AI. After hearing some of her songs, I agreed immediately. I think the song she wrote and the added lyrics are beautiful! If you go out to listen to “my” song, be sure to hear some of her others. They are all wonderful.

https://suno.com/song/955d3798-3b2e-45d1-a9c1-85c975bdba65

Parable of the Skunk

An eye-watering, acrid smell told us a skunk was under the porch.

Sarah Russell7 Comments

My thanks to Storyteller’s Poetry Review and Sharon Knutson for publishing my poem in a special collection called “When Nature Turns Nasty.” Many great (and funny) poems here.

An eye-watering, acrid smell
told us a skunk was under the porch.
The dog offered to kill it for us
or at least nudge it, but we declined
and called the varmint guy
who assured the tearful kids
the skunk would have a new home far away
and set a wire trap with stuff skunks like –
marshmallows and cat food.

Next morning, sure enough,
there was the skunk, munching marshmallows,
not even knowing he was caught.
The varmint guy came back, armed
with a large white sheet, a vial of ether
and safety goggles “just in case.”
He told us to stand back.
We did.

He held the sheet arms-wide in front
(so the skunk sees only blankness, he explained)
and inched slowly toward the trap.
(You don’t hurry blankness.)
The skunk still munched, enjoying the marshmallows.

 Finally, the sheet dropped over the cage,
the ether slipped underneath,
the munching stopped, and the kids
approved a sweetly sleeping skunk.
Then skunk, cage, sheet, 2 half-eaten
marshmallows and a cat food can went in the truck,
and off they drove to wherever needs more skunks.
The dog sniffed the crime scene. 

And it struck me how we humans go along
munching our marshmallows and cat food
while blankness closes in,
and then one day we wake up
to no marshmallows and an awful headache,
wondering what the hell happened.

February 2026

Sarah Russell8 Comments

Here’s the second poem published by Misfit Magazine in their Summer issue. Again, my thanks to Alan Catlin and the editorial staff for including me among these fine poets.

February 2026

This cold, cloud-bleak day, I hike
the bottomland near the river
through scrub oak and thistle,
grasses, stiff and broken. My boots
shatter ice skims that hover over mud,
hard frozen. I pick up a shard, thin
as tissue, and it weeps in my hand.
Breakage has allure—destruction 
and force, erotic. Why not
a shattering in this place where water 
will have its way in spring and erase 
the damage.
Two years ago, our country broke free 
from moorings, sage voices drowned 
by vandals wanting to trade the presidency
for dictatorship. Hard to build anything 
these days but golden calves and temples 
to avarice. Like Lot’s wife, I’m tempted 
to look back, but ahead is a small rabbit,
crouched, ears low, still as stone.

Butterfly

Sarah Russell13 Comments

My poem “Butterfly” was posted today by Silver Birch Press in their “Bugs and Insects” series. My thanks to Melanie, the editor of Silver Birch. The poem was first published in the anthology Is It Hot in Here or Is It Just Me.

Butterfly

A yellow butterfly floats above the dandelions
and bindweed.

I bought this rundown place unseen—
transplanted my roots to unfamiliar soil
closer to children and grandchildren.

I breakfast on the derelict patio before the sun
rises through the trees to scald the day.
The yard needs a gardener’s hand. “Next summer
after I get settled,” I promise, aware I am speaking
aloud to the butterfly, my visitor most mornings.

She must be female, I think, with the care she takes
of her lovely black accessories against the yellow
of her wings, the jaunty matching spots of makeup
above her eyes, the tilt of her feathery antennae.

I’ve never seen her land, always moving as I do
from painting rooms and finding flooring
to battling sugar ants who found the kitchen
years ago and like it there. She is a friend in this city
where my children move at a tempo not my own.

The butterfly’s time is short, as mine will be—
just enough to make this last place home
until the day when decisions are made for me.
I’ve promised not to fuss when that day comes.
For now, with the butterfly, I’ll follow the breeze,
feel sunlight and dew, live free.

My Mother-in-Law Boby Clariana

Sarah Russell14 Comments

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

This August morning

Sarah Russell2 Comments

A third poem published today by Red Eft Review. My thanks to Corey Cook for accepting all 3 recent poems that I submitted. I love this poem coming out now in late April, since I just hung out our hummingbird feeders for the summer.

This August morning
hummingbirds are at the feeder—
impossible creations dipping
into the nectar.
I wonder at their flair for flying
backwards, their nests no bigger 
than a walnut shell, their weeklong 
journeys on whirligig wings following 
the flowers. It gives me peace, 
thinking of small, irridescent lives,
momentary and breathtaking.

New England Spring

Sarah Russell7 Comments

I love the rainy, fecund springs we had when we lived in New England. Tried to capture it in this poem published today by Red Eft Review.

It has rained for days—sometimes early fog 
and a gentle mist that reminds me of the moors; 
sometimes the wind and drench of squalls 
from the Atlantic. Flowers love this spring, 
but worms sprawl helpless on sidewalks 
and die in the first patch of sun. The dog 
comes home bedraggled from his walks, 
happy and shaking on the stoop. I drape 
my slicker over a chair with a towel beneath 
to catch the drops, brew some tea, open 
my journal. A perfect morning.

Great Horned Owls, Mid-Winter

Sarah Russell1 Comment

My thanks to Red Eft Review and editor Corey Cook for publishing my poem today.

On our evening walk we hear them
in a stand of oak and pine—the female’s
breathy notes; the male’s answer, deeper,
like tones blown across a stoneware jug.
Before their sortie over snowy fields
they whisper greetings to their mates—
an alliance voiced in shadow. Our breath
clouds in the twilight.