Two Final Poems by Sally Cook

Her Grace

The day arrived when Edna was too blind
To live alone. She gave her things away—
The china owl with one glass eye—her mind
Was on the bumps in sidewalk cracks that day.
A flowered pitcher, empty, save for tears—
She knew what faced her in that place where old
Folks had to go, so, facing her worst fears,
Packed canisters devoid of flour, cold
Old roasting pans, some ribbon, recipes,
Affections, memories, her younger face;
Mementoes of her eccentricities,
And all that passing time could not erase.
The absence of all laughter in the gloom
When all would end in one small, scoured room.

The Book-keeper and the Bar-keep

Light dims at four-fifteen. The skittish sun
Leaves you in the bar at close of day.
We labor, billing ladies for the fun
They’ve had as they pass through their latest phase.

Editorial Note

These two poems were sent to me by Sally Cook many months ago, before her admission to the Nursing and Rehab Center in Dunkirk, New York. As far as I know, they are the last poems she ever composed.

The first piece is a sonnet on the end of a woman’s life—how she foresees it, makes arrangements for it, gives away her possessions, and prepares to enter a nursing facility. Being a person in her nineties, Sally was well aware of mortality, and also of the soul-shrinking dreariness of spending one’s final days in an institutional setting.

The shorter second piece reflects Sally’s interest in the tendency of many women to put themselves into exasperating and costly situations solely to meet men, whether at church socials, parties, soirées, or bars. As a woman of striking beauty, Sally had no lack of admirers in her life, but came to understand that relations between the sexes would almost always be fraught with misunderstanding and recriminations. She agreed with A.E. Housman that all romance

’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.

Once when we talked on this latter subject, I mentioned that the ancient Greeks believed men had been created by the titan Prometheus, while women had been created by the Olympian gods, and this is what accounted for the eternal battle of the sexes. We came from different moulds, and have different views and attitudes concerning the world. Sally replied “That’s as good an explanation as any for why we torment each other.”

I am sure Sally Cook would have wanted these two poems to be submitted to the SCP, as she published with us exclusively for the last eight years of her life. Whenever she finished a poem to her satisfaction, she always sent it to me for submission to Evan Mantyk, since her failing eyesight made it very difficult for her to type or use e-mail.

—Joseph S. Salemi

Sally Cook was 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.