Sarah's Soul

There was nothing really to be done.

Sarah’s soul had wound a thousand sweetest braidings

In the quaking needles of the one large tree.

The smell was heavenly!

Hot sap bubbling on the burner of a Colorado sun,

And her soul was all wound up and sticky in it.

Birds were perched on stolid twigs,

Balding birds with missing tufts of patches of fights

They’d chosen over resting;

Sarah’s soul had licked their beaks

And opened their gullets

For not the last time,

But for the first songs of its kind,

It was peaceful.

Sarah’s soul had stalked the stalking mountain lion

As it crept to leap upon the donkey, Rose,

Who was permitted to remain

In her repose of life-ful slumber and the somber, steady

Munching; and her

Grazing was a gift unknown,

Unwillingly bestowed;

And Sarah’s soul returned into her body on the mountain and

She was full of its journey and its triumphs.