Sally Sandler

Yours is not a clear or classic beauty.
Nothing like the leaves of liquidambar,
the flowers of the purple jacaranda,
or stature of the regal redwood tree.
...

Silence is the language of their choice—
the mountain peaks holding up the sky
that shoulder it and never question why,
like Atlas propping up the universe.
...

Flat as a prairie is my soul …
without canyon, without crest
or cliff or hill to climb and stroll.
Now that death has taken toll,
...

Death arrived, and time's too much—
where before there wasn't time
to say I love you near enough—
now I stare, and wonder why
...

"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses
to grow sharper."-William Butler Yeats
...

"Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."
-Bob Seger, Songwriter, "Against the Wind"
...

It's only 6: 45 a.m. You're early today,
my reflection watching me in the mirror
in your zippered robe, smearing on
cold cream to remove your face
...

Tell me again how the grassland swayed
as if in worship, waving to sky
whenever the mute-footed giants walked by,
and tell of the mountains on earth they made.
...

There is a cabin that doesn't exist,
and hides in a wilderness of pine.
I count the moss covered stairs that I climb
to escape there—ten steps into the mist.
...

Her name is June, though she's willow
as spring. I am coast live oak in the fall.

She is a dimple in milk-glass skin. I am
...

Deep beneath the sea in a bed of sand
a tiny pufferfish flaps tail and fins
and labors over cryptic ridges and
valleys, and burrowing he begins
...

The air lost weight today
just after the saws
took down the giant tree.
The ample bosom of leaves,
...

A hundred thousand years... what will they find?
After lapping hungry at our feet
the creeping seas rise, and then retreat.
Will humankind be fossil over time?
...

What ashes fall upon the winter snow
that traveled through the ozone to our door
from liquid fires, raging as they flow
like rivers to the California shore?
...

We walk the seashore—as we always do—
and pause, taking in the recent changes:
the sky is water-colored deeper blue,
and you and I—we briefly note our ages.
...

So bare and unprotected was your heart …
you asked me softly, pausing from your thought,
to "Care for it—the only one I've got, "
and I accepted, knowing that we'd start
...

In my memory it was more
than mother's ash we delivered
to the harbor by the bay,
on a warm August eve.
...

The coarsened name belies this silken treasure,
with iridescent dome and spiral apse.
Imagination slips inside with pleasure,
to behold the opus of blown glass.
...

The day I knew I'd fallen out of love,
immune to fascination of your spell,
I wasn't rocking with the wind above,
intoxicated drinking in the smell
...

That you could whisper through unseen webs
and care for the earth with a mother's love—
I didn't know, I just didn't know.
...