PoetryMagazine.com now in the 23st year online Sandra Anfang

Sandra Anfang is a poet and visual artist. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including San Francisco Peace and Hope, The Tower Journal, Poetalk,Unbroken Literary Journal, Rattle, and Spillway. Her chapbook, Looking Glass Heart, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. Road Worrier: Poems of the Inner and Outer Landscape (Finishing Line Press, 2018) followed. A full-length collection, Xylem Highway, was released in March, 2019 from Main Street Rag. Anfang has been nominated for a Best Short Fictions award and a Pushcart Prize. Unbroken Journal featured an interview with her about the prose poem. (http://unbrokenjournal.com/2016/02/an-interview-with-sandra-anfang/) She is founder and host of the monthly series, Rivertown Poets, in Petaluma, California, and a California Poet/Teacher in the Schools. Find her atsandraanfang.com

Crickets

She stands in the field

takes the long view down valley.

In spite of tethers and concrete blocks

her easel lists in the wind that winds uphill.

The Eucalyptus are creaking;

the sound reverberates

in her mother’s knees

echoes her constant complaint.

Once she saw a huge branch break off

and thunder to the trail a few feet on.

She shudders at the memory.

Light is fading fast.

In the distance she hears

someone hewing wood for supper.

The first crickets tune their wings

to a higher key.

Childhood’s End

When I was three I stripped the Red Maple bare

to make a bouquet for Mother.

She cried, composed her face,

and said I must not pick the leaves off trees.

After that my memory clouds distinctly.

When did we stop watching the Sweet Gum grow

counting the Red Maple’s leaves

the pear tree’s offering?

Roses crept up over the wrought iron table

melding with the ivy, molting their pale skins.

Cigarette butts filled the rock garden

under the second-story bathroom where I’d sneak a smoke

adding contrast to the landscape.

When did I begin to witness their accumulation—

like sheaves of discarded calendar pages—

as evidence of the passing years?

When did we stop tagging

the downward-hunted seconds

of high-flown omnipotence

from our perches in the Crabapple

children who descend

to quiet suppers

from their sylvan lairs

like so many upright apes?

The Rapture

The young stallion abandoned in his stall

incognizant of the end

played like it was yesterday.

Inside the envelope of his memory

an image of how he carried a boy

who tousled his mane

nuzzled his cheek with his own

and fed him apples from the Gravenstein tree.

He froze

tasted the direction of the wind

and understood

that no one would come for him.

He played like it was yesterday.

It’s Alright

It’s alright if your poems

accumulate in fraying journals.

It’s alright if some are stillborn.

It’s alright if there are days

when the touch of a pen makes you blanch.

It’s alright to give in to the sun

lying in the tall grass

counting midnight meteors

striping the sky.

Why must your life be a production run

though I know you were weaned on one?

Sit in the sand and feel the tide

suck out your sorrows.

Pelicans will lift them, one by one,

diadems to feather their nests.

It’s alright if our marks on the world

are but scratches in the dust

erased by the mercurial wind.

The trees know you’ve lived, Sandra.

You’ve already penned their story.

Count the rings to remember.

Equinox

I welcome the shrinking of the light

drape myself in dying vines;

the minted breath of evening’s breeze

mists the desiccated trees.

In spite of bloodless papered leaves

that line the path like cicada sheathes

summer lurks to steal our tears

of laughter from the carefree years

of shoeless wonder, river frolic

timeless play with Wren and Lark;

the smoke from autumn’s funeral pyre

stirs the soul and stokes the fire.

We retell tales of trolls and goblins

revel in the dark delights

lick our wounds and feed our hearts

dreaming of the vernal arts.

—These poems all appear in the book by the author, Xylem Highway, from Main Street Rag.