Looking for Lovejoy

 

 

We set out to seek Lovejoy hiding
in January’s night sky, probing with naked eyes.
There, on the horizon out beyond your Daddy’s line
of live oaks, is Jupiter rising.  So we set our sights
on the planet, not the comet, for the moment.

It’s easier to find than Lovejoy.

Kneeling on ginger dirt next to sweet olives,
you aim the scope, eye its viewfinder,
and finger the dials so we can see
Jupiter’s moons from this South
Louisiana prairie where your roots reach deep.

Come see, you say.

I peer into the opening made to magnify
distant wonders. A white orb and four moons
slide across the frame faster than I can track.
Training the lens, I chase the fifth planet
and its Galilean moons through black space.

It’s Earth that’s moving, you say,

Surely, the ground beneath me is shifting,
imperceptible, except for the instrument you place
in my hands.

 

 

 

Fallen Garden

 

 

The wind behind the gate has had its way
with you.  Too soon the dew will follow suit
and break your branches.  Ragged crystals play
their notes upon your bones, green gone mute.

 

The dreaded season shudders, swallows us both,
withering the days of sun-fed bounty.
And you go on without me, my broken oath
surrounds me hiding inside my house.  It found me

wrapped in your memory, full, green, lush,
you, in my basket, my belly, on my oven shelf.
I turn away to avoid the spoilage and brush
off pulling up your blackened stalks. I’m self-

absorbed even as I feast on the fruits of your prime,
ashamed I let the wind have its way this time.

 

 

 

 

Sandra Sarr writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, where she is restoring her old cypress house. Sandy is a novelist with extensive award-winning marketing, editing, and publishing experience as a senior university administrator. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, Whidbey Writers Workshop. Her poem, “Sestina for a Young Widow,” was nominated for an Association of Writers and Writing Programs Intro Journals Project award.  Her articles have appeared in Arches, the magazine of the University of Puget Sound, Science of Mind magazine, Terrain, the magazine of the University of Washington Tacoma, and La Louisiane, the magazine of the University of Louisiana.