All the poetry on the next page is also © Sandra Wade

He gave us

one raisin each

to chew

to make it last

as long as possible

I tasted

the bursting succulence

of a single moist grape

distilled sweetness

intense on tastebuds

piercing

as a silent, exuberant

explosion

(c) Sandra Wade 6/15/2007

Cat and mouse and
fly and spider

Mat and scouse and
spy and flider

Web and noose and
trap and intrigue

Plot and plan,
manipulation

Games and gangs
of four and seven

Weft and warp,
mesh and maneuver

Den of thieves and
lone assassins
Knots and ties and
mess amassing

How I yearn to
'keep it simple'!
All I seem to do is complicate and muddle
every angle - so I'll stop and
let this dangle!

© Sandra Wade 10-23-1998

but I ended up in prayer

while my father sat

and my sister slept

and the moon waxed full up there

I thought I went out to think

but I ended up in praise

for all the people I have loved

in family all my days

I thought I went out to breathe

in the chilly autumn air

but I raised my arms in prayer and praise

and knew I was heard out there

(c) Sandra Wade

 DARK OR LIGHT

                         Do not squint

                     against darkness

                   or peer in hopes of

                         penetrating it

                       Open wide your eyes

                         especially the Third

                   and let in all the light there is

                         and let yours out

                                   by Sandra Wade

                                   12-01-2005

Join the whirl of dancers

spin from group to group

caught in the exacting square

the social round

the lonely jive

Extend a hand

into slipping grasp

or miss the groping fingers

grab a flailing arm

Catch a body whole

and hold

until the rules decree you must

move on again

Yes, learn all the steps

of waltz, quadrille, samba

and stately minuet

but now and then

step back and

(smiling)

watch the dance

How can I love a barn, a barn first really noticed not in many passes to and fro over two decades, but in a photograph?

This old red barn near Upper Lake sits on a gentle slope, set back and separated from Highway 20 by a simple pond. Old jutting boulders flank the pond at either end, and there's a pure white egret poised at water's edge. Soft green winter grass and red-brown earth are damp in chilly mist.

Were it not for the barn's design or the egret, we could be in England or 'the Emerald Isle', shivering slightly in that marrow-penetrating moist air of an early morning. We trudge across the field near the pond, not disturbing a peaceful bird. We pause to touch with finger-tips brilliant green moss, revived to cushiony plumpness, on wise old rocks that seem like anchors in the scene, solid guardians of field and pond and barn alike.

Can it be called yearning, when the feeling memory stored in my very bones is of cold and loneliness? What in me pulls to meet the magnet of that scene? Maybe my cells remember bitter winters, praying in a rocky ledge cave along Killarney's shore, or in a hut of stones on windswept Iona with St. Augustine.

Many is the hour I have sat or lain, catching sun's last rays regardless of air's cooling and my goose-bump arms and legs. Just as now, on this late January afternoon, I sit in an idyllic scene of lake and reeds and ancient trees, casting a long shadow in the sunlit wedge between a mighty oak and the tall cedar nestled in and through its topmost arms.

I am here and I am not here. I am both here and in the photograph of barn and pond and rocks. I am here and there and also removed from them all, a floating photographer/narrator,

gathering them into cellular memory to treasure and re-experience in this, or some other, life-time.

© Sandra Wade January 29, 2000