Sheri Lindner

Once

 

Once
when Mount
Saint Helens erupted
hot rock seared life out of
every pulsing thing; gray ash and
dust entombed the char that a second before
had been plant and animal and person, sealing all in
graves the size of cities, the depths of seas. Scientists, who
are schooled in such matters, avowed that nothing would live in that
place for decades. They could not account, just five years later, for the single 
lupine that appeared, each leaf stalk a perfect six-pointed star, green spears pointing 
in every direction, the tangle of amethyst flowers, laugher bubbled up from the belly of earth. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

            
On Observing A Dog In A Meadow

Gravity loses its grip:
Back legs tuck up under her
Like landing gear 
Retracting into the belly of a plane.

Front legs reach out far
Into space she does not yet possess
Becoming wings
Creating her own updraft.

She flies across the meadow
Like my favorite dream:
Suspended above the grass
In aerodynamic ecstasy.
 
She shows you how it is done:
To reach into the
Yet-to-be known
Refusing to let earth
Or anything less worthy
Hold you back;
To leap without
Perfect knowing
Trusting your legs to
Touch down
In a place
That just might be
A Promised Land.
 



Vermont Forest


In dense Vermont woods
snow sifts
draping pine boughs
with thousands of filigreed veils.

The silence is so vast
(I never knew there were degrees of silence)

as if all sound
were locked within these million crystalline lattices.
This must have been
the ready, no-sound
the moment before
creation
burst forth;
or perhaps
the sublime quiet
the moment after.
             

Creamer Pond

At the waning hour of a mid-summer evening
the edges of the pond
are swaddled in lavender dusk.

But, as if it were God's gathering vessel,
Creamer Pond is still bathed
in bright, mid-day light
texturing its surface
velvet gloss.

Frogs and crickets
chant their vesper hymns
slow
and rhythmic.

I hang my robe
on the splintered, weathered pole
while the small creatures
sing and sing
their urgency
calling me
to take part
in their noisy, swelling chorus.
Drawn,
like the light,
I step my feet 
into the pond.

Here I am.

 

Sheri Lindner is a clinical psychologist and former English teacher whose writings have appeared in Poetica; Performance Poets Literary Review; The Reconstructionist; Kerem; Reconstructionism Today; Jewish Currents; Matzoh Ball Soup; The Ritual Well; and Jewish Women's Literary Annual. She can be contacted at:  SheriAL@aol.com