Tag: silver Birch press

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.

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.

If I Had Three Lives

Sarah Russell65 Comments

After “Melbourne” by the Whitlams

If I had three lives, I’d marry you in two.
The other? Perhaps that life over there
at Starbucks, sitting alone, writing – a memoir,
maybe a novel or this poem. No kids, probably,
a small apartment with a view of the river,
and books – lots of books, and time to read.
Friends to laugh with, and a man sometimes,
for a weekend, to remember what skin feels like
when it’s alive. I’d be thinner in that life, vegan,
practice yoga. I’d go to art films, farmers markets,
drink martinis in swingy skirts and big jewelry.
I’d vacation on the Maine coast and wear a flannel shirt
weekend guy left behind, loving the smell of sweat
and aftershave more than I did him. I’d walk the beach
at sunrise, find perfect shell spirals and study pockmarks
water makes in sand. And I’d wonder sometimes
if I’d ever find you.

Sarah Russell
First published in Silver Birch
Winner of the Poetry Nook contest
Republished in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily