I’d given up on being loved
Much less to be a wife
It was a wine glass full enough
Brown bowl of fruit still life

And as I write remembering
The day that I met you
My heart is squeezed revisiting
That moment like it’s new

The words I search for to describe
My feelings for you fail
As hard to translate as they hide
Like they’re the Holy Grail

Despite my verse inadequate
Much like a greeting card
T’was you the needed catalyst
That gave my life reward

You’ve loved me through
each circumstance
As patient as a waiter
Not sure I should have stood a chance
With all my ****** errors

And now I’m struck its twenty years
We’ve danced this waltz together
Our steps don’t seem to interfere
But overlap with pleasure

And mentally I bribe the Gods
These movements stay sublime
Forgetting that the rest were frauds
Till I had made you mine

So may I end this greeting card
Invoking you to stay
Till our souls drift up to the stars
On rhymes that float away

Written by Sara Fielder © Jan 2015

the small girl felt sick at her stomach,
fighting back the urge to ***** while wondering
where mother was, the fear of what lay beneath
the bed not as urgent as the more immediate
fear of when she’d return,

her younger brother asleep, unaffected she'd
disappeared two weeks earlier,
knowing their family seemed "different"
than the rest of the ones on the cul-de-sac

friends two doors down said they could hear the fights,
and weren’t allowed to play with them anymore,
so she concentrated on her times table,
depending on the safety of their outcome,
the answers fixed and unchangeable~
numbers were more reasonable than the arguments that sprung,
more solid than the Corelle she threw at dad

if he’d had better judgement he would have institutionalized her,
instead, the storm would pass as soon as she’d disappear,
demolition repaired, including the Toyota Corolla,
and her multiplication ritual grew up from one to ten

in her mind's eye the sums took on a new shape,
turning into days, then weeks, then months,
until she summarized that mother might not come back at all

Written by Sara Fielder © Apr 2012

A brown ocean of oats blows
upon this panorama of vast neutrality
where one can forget how to feel,
perception becomes a seed carried off
by the buffalo wind whose husk
has lost its tongue to senility,
and dries up under the thirsty sun

Written by Sara Fielder © Oct 2016

a stranger sat in dad's chair at the head of the table,
a young soldier wrapped in bandages that leaked body fluid,
a possessed spectral that stared at the stuffing and gravy
on the Thanksgiving plate like a foreign
object he'd lost familiarity with, me wondering,
if dad might be home for Christmas

he was about the same age as mother,
though most veterans I'd seen seemed older,
as if they'd lost the map to heaven
and needed someone to
come along and help them find it

white gauze wound around his head,
so that only holes for his mouth and
faraway eyes showed,
the feeding utensils as obscure
to him as the blue sky outside

and when the day began to run out,
the serviceman's mind engaged in a different war
more bazaar than eating,
he said nothing when mother picked up a spoon
and fed him the way I would my dolls


Written by Sara Fielder © Sept 2014

Fear is like a stubborn spirit
convalescing with you in bed each night
It tastes like medicine on an old woman’s tongue
wearing gray haired regret who
goes underground to get away from
the responsibility of death's predicament
It is a scratched vinyl history of vices
A vagrant borrowing trouble
from the future of yoked embryos
A metastatic tumor of suffering
too sad to find a moment of solace under
the numbing effect of the sun

Written by Sara Fielder © Mar 2016

I was never the type
of child that obeyed
much  of anything;
not even the many
times  I was told
not to stare into
the evening sun
when I felt
alone.

I do not feign for your affection,
as I sit grateful, where I,
await direction,
beneath the incandescent moon
nor see your face, to touch,
your heart is what I truly swoon,
you filled me up & I am free,
I sent it via a red balloon,
I'm at home
today alone,
where I await the night,
& the coming
of the morning light,
your blinding flash,
it comes & takes my sight
& I submit without a fight,
adrift again, in skies I change,
this time I am, a soaring kite,
I hope you hear my poets plight,
when taking my last winged flight,
D
     o
        w
           n
              I,
               F
                 A
                   L
                     L
Another vice, yes,
I didn't think twice
Lover it was very nice,
I wrote it on a grain of rice,

Singing Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah

I'm ash & I am  burning
I crash as I am learning
My heart beats on,
I'm wanting yearning,
my souls best friend
I hope I'm earning,

my mind is turning,

Morning comes & that's okay,
doesn't mean you have to stay
or matter what she has to say,
just please my baby, never stray,
a bed of passion I wait, I lay,

I hope you just never go away
for I would surely die,
in this poetic deluge,
drowning her,
you flooding my sky,
don't say goodbye
or make me cry,
there is no life without love,
beneath your shining sun.

Cherie Nolan© 2016

Her blue hips carry me into her womb,
where the melody of her crashing waves sound like the notes of an ethereal harp dancing through the chilled evening air.
Among all the lost messages in glass bottles floating through a liquid eternity, one read the name of her lover,
who ripped her heart from the sea.
Eventually, each bottle washed up into the arms the shore,
Yet,
The bottle that contained her lover’s name remained in the curves of the ocean, traveling through her body's maze.

My heart breaks at the sound of her faint, musical wheeping.
So I am with her, within her cold, salted embrace.
Submerged,
I open my burning eyes to watch her story.
I love the way her current cradles me with aching love-
And now I can see
That the strength within her current,
Can wash away the grief of a fractured heart.


© 2016 D.M.V