Grey like a pearl
Comes the morning
Washed up on the sand
Handled and worn
Turned over
And over
And over again
Polished and gleaming
With worry





Sara Mathews     May 2017

But it’s after the rains
When things really happen
When the seams break open
Spilling forth
All that is pent up
When the ground swells
In uncontained revelry
Exploding with riotous voice
It’s after the rains
When the walls
Crumble in
And the very foundation of you
Slips back to mother earth
Only then
The true healing
The Spring of you
Can rise up greening
Beside the new rose
More vibrant than before
More alive
In boisterous ascent
With the wakening world




Sara Mathews     April 2017

I can see myself
On that sunny hill
Part of me
More than a shadow
Maybe a heartbeat dropped
In the twisted vine
The wild bramble
Caught to the hem
Of this long lost soul
A wisp of my breath
Still flutters the copper leaf
A trace of my step
Lingers soft
In the burnished pine
And I can hear myself
In the wooded glade
My whistle lives on
With the raucous jay
The notes suspended
All these days
Waiting
Waiting for my return





Sara Mathews     April 2017

Photograph by Martha Andrews Donovan

A wisp of broken morning
The stars still speak of night
The moon
A remnant memory
The clouds
A fleeting dream
And I
The solemn innocent
Bathed
In beginning light







Sara Mathews     April 2017

I couldn’t sleep last night
With the fretful wind
Too close to my heart was she
Her indecisiveness I knew too well
The sudden fits
False starts
Headstrong gusts
They rattled at the brain
And shook my solid hideaway
Unleashing beasts of memory
I joined her rousting of the night
We beat our chests with savage strength
We howled and shoved and hurled the air
And spent the last
Of every little breath
Every unwept tear







Sara Mathews     March 2017

When the sky is grim
And the rain is sad
And I wake to the reluctant day
The heaviness becomes me
My face as pale as the missing sun
My step as soft as the muffled hour
And the slow rolling mist
Is my ally
We don’t disagree
But share our dreary company
As two grey souls
The day and I




Sara Mathews     March 2017

The day my father died
Was a cold day in winter
Brittle
Gray
Unyielding
Like a fast approaching storm
We shored against
With some small hope
But the sky leaned in
And took him
I held his hand
'til it went cold
And still I couldn’t leave
There was a certain peace
But not enough
To let him make his way
Alone




Sara Mathews     March 2017