Sarah Rossiter

Here nothing moves, the water
waiting, still as glass, amid
the cattails’ silent stalks while
over there across the sea,
fire shreds the sky, exploding as
...

One early spring in Illinois,
startled by the foreign sight
of pelicans upon dark water,
we stopped to stare, my mother
and I, at such ungainly awkward
...

“The feather flew, not because of anything
  in itself but because the air bore it along.”
...

It’s a question of control, or should I say
the lack of it in this fractured fear-filled
world that draws me each free afternoon
to focus on a wooden puzzle, solid, tactile,...

She was five when her mother left her
At the movies with her baby brother and
Never returned which could have been
The end of the story though it’s not—
...

She enters the cottage to find
The corpse laid out for burial,
The family waiting for her to eat
The fresh-baked bread placed
On the body.

It was midnight when we saw them,
such unexpected bright abundance,
we thought at first we must be dreaming,
the night itself lit from within as if
...

Who knows why the fledglings died—
slowly—lingering even now in the nest
built in the clothespin bag hanging from
a nail on the porch while the frantic
...

Around the edge lace filigree shatters
at the slightest touch, shards scattering
like broken glass, but farther out the ice
is thick, immobilized by Arctic cold,
...

If, at the breakfast table,
I had not looked up just
as the red fox, burnished
coat glinting, trotted past,
white-tipped tail carried
like a flag, I would have
...

This is the season when trees
Stand naked, stamped in sharp
Shadow on still-green grass.
This is the time between living
And dying.

This year I find the river slowed,
The trout gone missing, insects too,
The yellow lily, broken-stemmed,
No wild rose or river otter, no
...

1914–1943

Seated before the woodstove,
bold tongues of fire licking
the glass door, I wonder
what it was like for the first
person to discover she had
...

In this uncertain human season,
I sometimes shiver with despair,
And yet today, a cold dark dawn,
A flock of migrants burst through
Mist, winged flames of orange,
...

Though some might think it heresy
I confess it troubles me that though
He said to those He led that a grapevine
can’t grow figs, isn’t that just what
...

When spring comes,
The Body wakes,
Flesh of our flesh
Without whom nothing
Would exist.

Waking to winter’s dawn
the room drained of color,
except for neon numbers—
6:14—blinking on the bruise
of the bureau against a pale
wall while out the window,
...

This is the season:
Cradle of quiet,
Trees, waiting,
Naked on the hill,
Branches entwined
Like lovers holding
Hands.

After the Birth,
The season of light—
Out of the darkness,
The moonflower opens,
Luminous, petals
Unfurling in the night,
As the star beckons,
...