Easy fall into the earthly atmosphere
of spore and spine; some angel
of ruthless beauty has turned
her insubstantial back
on heaven’s monochrome,
has come to dye the clouds cobalt,
daub them in the dawn water
of Snug Harbor.
Under the bow of our rented skiff
clouds spill, India ink, hue
of the Evening in Paris perfume bottle
I coveted, nearly stole, from Woolworth’s;
the blue glass with its plated gold cap
a kind of haunt, and the swoony scent
nothing like the pungent attar
of tidal salt and mud, but redolent
of the same longing, the soul turned out
into the tussocks of oyster grass
the sun now warms to umber,
into the bushy tailed retreat of the red fox
at the far edge of the marsh.
The unattainable visits our day
to suggest we cannot possess it, cannot
stay―beauty and its attendant ache.
Wonder enough to drift in this channel
of floating light while under the hum
of our boat blue clouds brood, sift
through my fingers.
This poem first appeared in Solitary Spin (Main Street Rag, 2017).
—
Barbara Sabol lives in Akron, Ohio, close to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, whose trails she knows by heart. She was named Ohio Co-Poet of the Year for her sixth book, Watermark: Poems of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 (Alternating Current Press, 2023.) Other honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. Her forthcoming book, Mapping the Borderlands: Haibun and Tanka Prose, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2025.
