with
each passing frost,
leaves howl
pre-winter wind
reminding me of
whispers spun
by autumn;
a sweet yearning
for scarlet colors
sparkling sky,
and a warmth
that I can
feel only …
in retrospect
© Sarah Whiteley
like birdsong,
stillness returns –
and memories
spill like honey
scented with jasmine
time and miles,
and miles and time –
have kept me
from your door
but today not even
a deluge could
deter me from you
summer song, and
an open window –
I have come back
to your door
© Sarah Whiteley
of course those memories
have become trinkets now,
oddly shaped things rarely
handled in daylight hours
except when dusting,
which is often a perfunctory
thing done while talking
on the phone or making
plans for dinner or dog
sitting or something less dust
specked than memories
© Sarah Whiteley
Tomorrow marks six years since I arrived in Seattle. It’s been a chaotic six years, but I am so incredibly grateful to this place for the vast number of memories that sustain me. Glad to be home, but forever missing Montana…
sometimes memories
feel like skin
you sloughed off
but which still trail
these brushstrokes
and long-ago hues
I still like to touch
the spaces where
your brush left
vibrant traces
the view of the park
through the new conifers
and the one missing maple
from nine years ago
is still the same
we walk the same arc
and trailing behind
are these places
where your brush
breathed life into mine
your breath on my neck
your brush in my hand
the greens and the grays
and the blues we have spanned
for somehow we’ve always found
our freedom was found in this pallet and ground,
our breathing was calmer
together, we painted these moments
and though I am gone,
there’s still echoes of that soft brush in song
© Sarah Whiteley
within the color of the ginkgo
early stories lie in wait
shy as fledgling beggars
for the dawn’s sparing light
which warms without burning –
without consuming truth or tall tales
we are these slow-burning remnants
from the last days of summer
still clinging to what shadows we can
under the quickening change of the trees
and unclenching fingers like fists
until autumn reminds us how
old newness truly can be
© Sarah Whiteley
contemplative fires we built then,
in hours when we would more gladly
have burned the stars instead
just because they would not
burn back –
these were never wasted moments,
nothing ever is when lingered
over long – instead these coals
walk with me now
into rain-soaked mornings
quiet
but somehow still whispering –
remember it is not failure
even when it feels
like spent thunderstorm light
it will come, this quiet –
lasting only long enough
to cup perhaps a small bird
within these calloused hands
and even now,
six years after,
there are certain songs
that I cannot sing
because your voice –
formerly only quiet
and unemphatic,
possessing its own
quietude at its own pace –
now floods each fret of my throat
with scrapes of the memories
that come,
unasked for,
to light within ears
that once bent
only to your heart
and at their own pace
© Sarah Whiteley
this singular year,
our notebooks lonely have grown
around us,
like paper dogs with folded ears
and long-suffered bruises
for now we shoulder
our last evergreen kiln
recounting pieces of each other’s
lives we’ll miss being sewn into
the inconstant neck of time,
between the sleeves
and the hours we pressed
we planted flowers
and called them by our names,
understated stalks of calico gold
grown tall as hearts could take them
we nigh suffocated on the birds
that sang for us at breakfast
from branches that couldn’t grease
by breeze-borne varieties
but untitled like them, our pages,
binder-bound and mostly spent,
will not be stilled with silence
though we’ve relinquished claim
to every last bookend
© Sarah Whiteley
Note: Faring thee well, we bid adieu to eight wild years of Duffys! Thank you Darcie and Missy – you helped make these past few years incredible!
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