If I could choose the perfect way
To spend a life
It would be this
A witness to
The rise and fall of sun
To paint with word or brush
Or camera lens
Each one
As simple snowflake never has a twin
I’d capture every wave
Of violet tide
And pool of grapefruit pink
And pen and ink
The gulf of vermillion
And spectacles
Of prism sky
I would behold
Embellished with a storyline in gold
And other colors without name
And each nuance of early light
And evening flame
Would be a chapter in my book
And none would read the same
And I would be official raconteur
And herald
Lest one amazing masterpiece
Slip by
Or subtlety forgot
If I could choose the perfect life
To be my lot




Sara Mathews     September 2015

I looked for you in Autumn

The morning was a layered gray

With higher clouds that held

And hovered solemnly in place

And lower 

More impatient clouds that sailed

And raced 

Toward furthest edges of the day 

While sun as bold as all July

Broke through at every interval he could 

And kept me lingering there

With hope 

He would prevail

And I withstood the fits of rain

And bite of cold on summer skin

To feel the sun burst forth  

And briefly warm the earth 

And me again

I looked for you in every element

And in a conscious way 

I said a poem aloud

To tree and sky 

To lazy and ambitious cloud

To you if you would hear

And as I spoke the end

A sudden spirit ruffled through the grasses

At my feet

And breath of wind swept past

To spin the air 

With gold acknowledgement

From listening trees

And ray of sun broke through 

To gild and spotlight the embrace

Of showering leaves

And you were there

And I was filled with joy at finding you

In every leaf that lilted gently down

And one that was especially you

I caught to

Treasure 

And I saved the gold to press

Within the page

Within the heart

Within the chest

Sara Mathews     September 2015

Take me to the ledges
When I’m gone
It’s where you’ll find my
Childhood soul
She waits for me
Among the towering pine
And hemlock bowed
She perches on the granite shelf
An outcrop bursting forth
From ancient soil
That will not be confined
But reaches for the warming
Sun to feel alive
Adorned with softest lichen moss
No color can describe
It’s here she lies
Beneath the opening of sky
She traipses barefoot
On the leafy floor
Of many falls
And up and down the
Rows of stony
Walls of broken years
Keeping nothing out
And no one in
But ever mark a border
On this woodland Eden
She leans against an
Elder beech and
Listens to the song
Of rattling leaves
That’s strummed with
Summer breeze
She scampers with the chipmunks
And whistles with the jays
And frolics in the
Dappled light
That filters
Through the trees
She is a forest sprite
That lives among the
Matchstick moss
Of old abandoned fairy stumps
She skinny dips
In laughing brooks
And falls into the sun
To dry upon
The Ledges
When she’s done
So take me back here
When I’m gone
She waits for me
She waits for me




Sara Mathews  -  September 2015

"The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:

   I hear him begin far enough away

   Full many a time to say his say

Before he arrives to say it out."

Robert Frost

I remember the summer nights of the whippoorwill.  The hottest, most airless nights, when the world outside seemed to be holding it’s breath, so little movement in the humid, tropical heaviness.  No stir or spin to the leaves outside my window, just a thickness that made me feel as though a breath was an arduous pull through a long straw.  

Sleep never came easy on these nights.  In an old farmhouse, air conditioning meant opening the cellar door for the coolness of it’s depths, and hopefully nothing else unwanted, like snakes or large cellar spiders.  I would toss and reposition myself to the coolest part of the sheets and yearn for that elusive spin of the mind that signals the prelude to sweet slumber.

And just when that little glimpse of mind wandering would tease with hope, a faraway song would travel from the edge of the world and wind it’s way into my consciousness.  A pretty song when heard once or twice, but over and over the notes would be sung until it felt like a brainwashing, and even when it ceased for a moment, my mind, traitorously, would fill in the pattern until it started up again. 

Slowly it would travel ever near, from woods to meadow to just beneath my window.  What drew these souls to serenade our farmhouse on those sleepless nights?  Why sit beneath my window sill and carry on so close and loud that they may as well have been under my pillow.  

Such a haunting, frustrating song… and all I could do was pray for intermission.   

But now, how I mourn the loss of the whippoorwill.  It has become an elusive memory and nostalgic echo of my childhood summers.  It is a strange thing to miss the torment of that incessant chorus but the long, hot summer nights seem strangely incomplete now and the silent spaces at two am remind me of their absence.  It is a sound of summer that has disappeared, though the remnants of the refrain ring beautiful in my mind.  

Listen… you said into the phone

What’s this sound?

As you opened and closed the screen door

Reaching wide

Like muscles stretching

Squeaking in a voice that’s rusted 

Snapping shut

The waking up

Of a door unused

Three seasons long

What’s more summery 

Than that, you asked

And I answered with a poem

And what’s more summery than…

A June bug knocking

Over and again

With all his vim 

Against the screen door

Trying to buzz in

And whizzing wing of dragonfly

In spirals of afternoon July

And crickets

Filling August cracks

With music of a lower sun

Farewell in your hello, I hear

Portending Autumn ever near

And where’s the quintessential bird

My childhood summer friend

The whippoorwill that travelled late

To call at two am

And sit beneath the summer moon

And croon of summer’s end

And what’s the sound of fleeting days

The flocks of swifts are counting down

A crystal chime of glasses raised 

To orchestras

Of summer sound

Sara Mathews -  September 2015

         


         

             my thoughts swirl

                 upward with the swifts

                      to dart and spin 

                         and hover

                            like flocks of

                                broken heartbeats 

                                    flutter 

                                       with the pulse of night 

                                          but you 

                                             are revelers on high

                                               and sailors of the gloaming 

                                                  in muted flight

                                                  you etch in poem

                                                 with reckless

                                              winged filigree

                                            your essays drifting

                                        down to me

                                    in syllables of hope

                              and boundaries fall

                         and burdens fly

                    and I unravel

               to escape with you 

          in swifts of smoke



Sara Mathews - September 2015

I’m swimming with the

Summer loon

And side by side we glide

And dive down into colder depths

Where April hides

And even March is tucked away

Here in the bottom's breadth

Of spring fed waters

We linger there

In blackness cool

And reminisce

In chilliness

And then we slowly 

Make the climb

Through layered days

Of Mays and Junes

We float up gently 

Through July

And break the surface of

The August haze

And here we bob and tread

Together 

Quite companionably

Until September reaches down

And pulls my feathered friend

Into October skies

Sara Mathews - September 2015