Avalanche
After the tumbling
of a wave of snow
has quieted
and you are trapped
in depth and whiteness,
you should clear a space
in front of your face
to breathe of course
but also to drool.
It is the drooling,
the movement of it,
where it travels
that guides us –
whichever way it runs
on your skin, you dig in
the opposite direction.
Scrape against gravity
until you see sky.
Drooling orients.
Saliva signals.
Blood, guts and saliva –
coating life, surround
a baby as she appears
from dark folds, covered
in stickiness, swaddled
in muck and waste –
grant us survival.
Angelology
Nothing is exactly as it should be
for very long. It was a late night
drive from Vermont to Maine,
warmed inside from a weekend
with my boyfriend – all as it should be
on this dark corridor of highway.
Alone, window down, a wad of gum
to chew, keeping me awake –
the radio loud and grainy.
Another forty-five minutes
to Cundy’s Harbor and sleep.
A sudden cough, a deep inhale,
and the hunk of gum sucked
back, a cork, suffocating me
at seventy miles an hour.
My mind hurled to another,
world – I saw my obituary
typed in script on newsprint:
Sarah Stelle Dickenson died
from choking on several pieces
of Trident sugarless bubblegum
between Wells and Kennebunk…
Perhaps these words pressed my foot
on the accelerator, released
a need to see red taillights,
drive along side the van,
jam my hand on the horn,
make both of us slide
to the shoulder,
one man jumping out,
pulling me to him,
my back against
him – his sudden
strength unhinging
the stuck gum.
Our standing
on the side
of the road,
me gasping,
him, still
holding me.
The Last Page of The New Yorker
Two bears are enjoying a laugh –
it’s the New Yorker cartoon this week,
the one we get to create captions for –
yet another thing I’ll never win.
How many times have I entered
the bring-your-own-bag raffle
at Trader Joe’s to get a twenty-five
dollar gift card? And yesterday,
I sent three poems in a manila envelope
for the Red Berry Editions Valentine’s
Day Poetry Contest. Right now
those three pieces, along with a self-addressed,
stamped envelope, a fifteen dollar check,
and what I hope is a pithy cover letter
are in some mail truck headed to a mail
plane to California, will be walked
in a mail bag to the Red Berry Editions
editor who may read my poems.
I want her to read them
aloud – so loudly
I will hear her.
Why We Stay
A person may die
if she will let go,
unhinge herself
from the world,
from the voices
she loves, from
the smells – her
beloved lilacs,
just baked almond
cake, the crowns
of her children’s
heads, and yes,
her husband’s skin.
If she can release,
she will drift into
death – that’s how
my father left.
We had walked
away to eat a meal –
a spinach salad –
out of his hearing,
his smelling, his
room now silent
where he could be
untethered,
nothing to hold
him here.
Fortune Telling
My palm looks smoother
than I’d imagined under
scrutiny. The other side
is roped with veins and wrinkles,
speckled with a few age spots
that slipped on unawares.
My life line arcs into the line
of the mind – so much is lived
in my head – stories that make me
wince, feel fear, remember –
my father’s half smile,
my mother’s image in the mirror
of Talbot’s dressing room,
wide enough for her wheelchair –
I think I was beautiful once, she said.
What lives in my mind line –
a life, many lives, one lived,
others imagined, tested, weighed,
discarded. And the marriage line,
tucked beneath my pinky,
just one small indentation –
one marriage, not notable
on my palm but elevating
everything, inexorable,
filling a world.
Sarah Snyder has been an English teacher for many years, a mother for several, and student and participant in poetry workshops, classes, and writing conferences. She was lucky to be a part of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and to have had several poems published in magazines, journals, and book anthologies like Comstock Review, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, West Trade Review, The Main Street Rag, Zeugma Magazine, and Mothers Always Write. Recently two of her poems poems received awards from The Poetry Society of Vermont.
