another gray morning I wake
from a dream of the end
of the world it comes
without warning the alarm
a deafening buzz as all
the bees in the world
die in a hum at the end
of it all honey gone sour
and seeping
from empty hives like
sap from dying trees all
sweetness lost
sleet tapping the windows
a warning a sigh an
exhalation of hope
as I wake in a wonder
of fear from a dream at
the end of the world
a pattern of light on the wall
~sharon brogan may 02019
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once I imagined the bell
all the rest came easily
the young man in the burgundy coat
lilies tolling their scent in the garden
pale moon over narrow streets, it all
dreamt itself into tall dark trees
shivering with sparrows and windthe wind in the shutters
the nervous courtyard
something sacred at the altar
the pale child in her ghost dress
the book with its gossamer gilded pages
its thin black-pebbled cover
this docile child, butterfly wingsthe old man bent into his cane
shuffling, shuffling, the pale moon
it all came quite easily, then
the moon walked into the mountains
the stars fell the old man fell
the lilies dropped their thick petals
the young man became a branchscratching, scratching the window
the shutters opened their louvers the fan
making its ocean sound it all became
lightness and bright stripes on the wall
morning morning and I step into the garden
thick slow beat of pelican wings
into a cloud of pale moths
For an audio post of this poem, go here.
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I want to tell you
how spring feels
in Alaska, next
to the sea,
with aspen & cedar
with eagles & gulls.
I want to tell you
how spring feels
here, beside
the river, with spruce
& pine, with robins
& crows. I want
to tell you how
this sky stretches
between mountains,
how it blues.
Life teaches grief here.
May snow takes the lilacs.
I want you to know how my body
cries. I want to tell you how
your touch lifts me out
of myself. I want to tell you how
words catch in my throat
how I choke
on them.
I want to tell you
what I want to hear,
how my ears long for it,
how I listen.
You tell me you don’t understand.
I want to tell you how to understand.
I want to tell you how I feel when you hold me, how it’s homesafe.
I want to tell you who I am, how I became. I want to tell you what I see
when I look at you, that you do not see
when you look at yourself. I want you to know
how it feels
to love you. I want to tell you what it’s like to be old, how it feels to fall, how the bed holds me down in the morning.
I want to tell you the colors of sky at sunset, the gold, the purple, the green.
I want to tell you the smell of horses, of hay, of barns. The sounds
of grasses swaying in wind.
~sb may 02019
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sleep in grief
wake in grief
grief at the doorstep
~sb january 2021
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How does the writer's brain work? It is a bewilderment to me, why it must be this particular word, or that particular image. How is it that now, in this time of several national and global crises, I emerge from sleep holding to this juxtaposition:
i wake
my face is wet
the blue heron stands
one foot
on a slate roof
~sb January 2021
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First they took the tonsils.
Then the appendix & that extra
tooth. Then they straightened
my eyes & blinded me with light.
Next an ovary, then the other
& the uterus & the cervix. Finally
the gallbladder. Then they rebuilt
the knee. No knives have been
at me for years, but if they could
take this fatigue, I’d let them. My
heart has been taken & taken
apart many times. Stitched back
together by inexpert hands.
Sometimes the threads unravel.
~ sb
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the solid ground
though it’s been known to shudder
to open without warning into great rifts
to offer sudden sinkholes & eruptions of fire
daydreams, nightdreams, the tenuous braid of imagination
history as written between the stars
the upside-down lies your eyes tell you, day after day
the sky, its blue breathable air
though it’s been known to thicken with smoke
with the exhalations of furnaces and exhausts
with too much rain for the cracked ground to swallow
the smell of coffee in the morning, the taste of cinnamon
the silence behind, beneath the crackle & spit, the roar of the city
the rise of light in the east, its fall in the west
the intricate interweaving of insect & animal & forest
though it’s been known to unravel in a cascade of death
to leave only fossils & devastation
the slow re-evolution of merging cells
––
sharon brogan
november 02015
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every day thousands of humans
and other creatures die
by bomb, bayonet, starvation
every day women
are raped and mutilated
children beaten and abandoned
every day humans
push buttons pull triggers sign papers
that result in the deaths
of uncounted hundreds of thousands
every day we humans
close our eyes and turn away
this is not metaphor
every day
my heart breaks
this is metaphor
~sb
08/12/25
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this room this bright quilt
winter waits on the other side
of these dark windows
elsewhere cities
in dust and rubble
everywhere cities
on fire all this has nothing
to do with me the naked child running
through fire has nothing to do with me
these buildings become dust
have nothing to do with me
I sit on this bright quilt
blue and white and red
patterns of flowers and thread
I drink from my modern porcelain
blue and white cup a pale
version of Italian cappuccino
what is true? who is to blame?
I open the bedroom window winter
is coming as it has here for many
generations of my line of which
I am the last these are not my
children they have nothing to do
with me
who is innocent? they carry
small broken bodies of children
holding shoulders holding knees
the bodies bent loosely heads
tipped back limp arms dropping
in the evening I turn down the heat
~ sb
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I hear the sweet voice of a young woman
making love. “Oh!” she says, “Oh!”
The birch trees tremble with sparrows. Yellow
leaves and seed husks flicker to the ground.
Dragon-Cat leaps to the porch bannister. He sits,
staring at the window, waiting to be noticed.
Two squirrels have sex in the garden.
They take turns, being boy, being girl.
In the arctic, a glacier cracks
another piece of itself
into the sea.
~sb
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