[Julie Steiner]

Hi, Catherine! I don't mind your saving me the trouble of typing these. I'll rebaptize them here, if you want to delete them above, and I will include the note on "To a Minor Goddess." (I've also edited above to indicate that Maryann hadn't made the ungenerous comment about posting one's own work. That was...um...someone else.) A quick PM to Jane Osborn can make your posts above disappear completely, if you like.


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Four poems in Sapphics
by Catherine Chandler

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Shadow Fish


     Great hoarfrost stars
     arrive with the shadow fish
     clearing the path to dawn.
     —Federico García Lorca, from “Romance sonámbulo”


     For the mothers of the disappeared


Here they come, the ravenous sharks of morning,
feasting on the moon and the stars and planets,
swallowing the glimmer of light that’s rising
     green in the distance.

Barn owls blink in tacit approval. Cold and
unconcerned, the crickets and frogs keep singing.
Soon the cock will crow, and the fox will charm a
     hare from the woodlot.

Far away the five o’clock whistle blasts its
warning at the desolate crossing. Aspens
shiver. Shadow fish are retreating, silver,
     dragging you with them.


From Lines of Flight (Able Muse Press, 2011), p. 5


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sub rosa


There were two: shy “Emilie”, quiet “Ellis”.
One assumed a masculine name to mask it;
one dropped sweets and messages in a basket
     over the trellis.

Boy or bee, the Belle would take rules and bend them
with her slant on rhythm and rhyme and nectar.
As for Ellis, no one would dare respect her
     should she offend them

with a tale of blustering heights of passion
written by a maidenly preacher’s daughter.
One despaired of finding an imprimatur,
     wearing an ashen

wardrobe, watching, stitching her words together.
Dreams of Gondal! Dreams of a secret lover!
Still the skittish poet(ess) runs for cover:
     birds of a feather

may in mortal fear of the prejudicial,
even now, when tempted to seek admission,
approbation, countenance, recognition,
     use the initial.


From Lines of Flight (Able Muse Press, 2011), p. 37


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To a Minor Goddess

(Poem ii from "Two Poems of the Sea")


Wave on wave all heaving and arch and spillage;
blue and green and grey overlaid with silver.
Christmas Day — my saviour the South Atlantic.
     Triumph. Surrender.

All my gods have failed me, yet Achelois,
you have watched me wavering in the billows;
you have heard me weeping the wail of seagulls,
     and you have answered:

Do not look for eyes in the dancing diamonds;
do not long for lullabies in the breakers;
do not lend more tears to the salt of oceans’
     flotsam and jetsam.

Listen for the crash. See the string of seafoam
lace that hems the sand with a hush and whisper.
Silence. Nothing. Everything. Constellations.
     Guardian angels.


Note: Achelois is a minor Greek moon goddess whose name, translated into English, means "she who washes away pain."


From Glad and Sorry Seasons (Biblioasis, 2014), p. 12


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Lessons at Fall Kill Creek


     Altissima quaeque flumina minimo sono labi.
     —Quintus Curtius Rufus, Historiae Alexandri Magni


I was only five, but I’ve not forgotten.
You and I set off as we do each morning.
Hand in hand, we walk in the April sunshine,
     father and first-born.

Halfway to the Samuel Morse School, we would
sometimes stop to see how the creek was faring—
Fall Kill Creek that runs through Poughkeepsie, draining
     into the Hudson.

Rain from upstate wetlands and marshes—seeping,
racing southward, coursing through stonewall channels—
forms a perfect habitat for the bluegill,
     darter and minnow.

Now we’re at the Catharine Street and Mansion
crossing, looking over the iron railing
at the water, higher than ever, flowing
     steady and silent.

Then your quiet words—how it is that stillness
mustn’t be confused with a lack of passion;
why it is that rivulets lead to rivers,
     rivers to oceans.


From Pointing Home (Kelsay Books, 2019), p. 23