Early Days
The scent of roses, and the blazing sun,
The gas pump next door busy—day’s begun.
No school; some insects flit. I feel the heat
Upon my skinny shoulders and my feet.
As Mama’s chickens cackle in their pen,
I revel in the world I’m in. But then
Not too far off, there lay a darkened wood
To which I soon would go, because I could:
A place of cheats and liars, claw and tooth;
And no defense to bolster up the truth.
I reveled in that wood when as a child,
Though things I could not know were running wild.
In spite of disappointments of this world,
My early life survives, chaste and dew-pearled.
Trapped Butterfly
Ask of the fates why this small wingèd thing
Dropped down behind a glass-surrounded maze—
No one knew its confusion, heard it sing.
It could not count the hours that closed its days.
Forgetting scented meadow, feathery lane
The desperate creature thought, then questioned fate.
Wondering why the narrow glassed-in pane
Seemed safe and warm, it sensed its doom too late.
Free on the swinging air, it once could dive,
Then rest upon the dahlia’s silken skin,
Work only just to procreate and thrive;
Drift in the dark, then watch the day begin.
Traps are not always clear transparencies—
In dreams we seek the opening that frees.
Becoming an Artist
—for Peter Busa, Il Professore
His rumpled jacket hid a threadbare shirt.
The thing about him was, his aura sang;
His shoes, well scuffed by New York pavement dirt,
Walked in a sure, slow tread. The bronze bell rang.
You had to leave, but sensed his secret, strong:
He held it to his heart, a mystery
That called you out to join, to sing his song—
A lilting, vagrant, saucy melody.
He was an artist. What he had to show
Said nothing to you of the lifelong pang
Of loss, bad luck and evil, creeping slow—
His fights for truth with snaggletooth and fang.
Not knowing this, you chose to laugh along
And hope someday to join this glorious throng.
Sally Cook is both a poet and a painter of magical realism. Her poems have also appeared in Blue Unicorn, First Things, Chronicles, The Formalist Portal, Light Quarterly, National Review, Pennsylvania Review, TRINACRIA, and other electronic and print journals. A six-time nominee for a Pushcart award, in 2007 Cook was featured poet in The Raintown Review. She has received several awards from the World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets, and her Best American Poetry Challenge-winning poem “As the Underworld Turns” was published in Pool.
