Sabine Miller


5 Poems from the Travelogue
Red Rock Walking

A woman walks down a road
preceded by a rabbit. A woman walks
down a road on a horse. A woman with
the roundness that comes from walking
properly walks. A woman in a cloud
of mosquitos walks untouched. A woman
who slayed a tyrant walks like a snake.
A woman who forgave the sins of her
fathers walks as if balancing a vessel
on her head. A man walks his children.
A boy who will never read a newspaper
walks his dog. A red-breasted bird walks
the fence in the fiery clouds. Thunder
Mountain constantly walking. A carp-shaped
cloud walks into a butte. A coyote walks,
a pig walks. A woman walks into the sand
under constellations and lays her vessel
down, in case of rain.



Superbloom

You can’t know: too much rain rots the seeds; too little dries them; too much wind brings too much garbage; there will be plastic blooming on sage stalks; you can sing up the sun but not its colors; you can sit in a pool at dawn; everyone else can sleep in; there are many clouds; they will cover or uncover the rays; the horizon’s a wisp of a glow; the sky only blushes; the half-moon’s half-hidden; the sky greys over. But then the glow leaks and spreads: the glow starts to glow, the half-moon trues, the grey turns petal-blue, the clouds light up like goldfish on fire, the gypsy sky drinks the gypsy air, the sky is soused, the rays shoot out,

the sky flowers.



Song of Joshua Tree

They are like mute, branched palms; the wind doesn’t move them; they are contrarian trees; they intimidate me; I cannot write a thinking poem; my thinking mind sings to my thinking mind; image supplants philosophy: the Joshua trees are Medusa-frozen horses; they got cast at Pompeii; the singed thatches don’t fray; they do not take each others’ water; they don't go for weeping; I keep my eyes behind glass between the many small blades.



A Pause in the Desert

Dusk turns the dunes into a moonscape; the sun barely reaches from behind a cloud; one mountain defines the other mountain; one thought flutters as paper; one could forget to write it down: the freedom to turn the head to see the spread; the company of a stranger who asked if I’d seen any animals: the one sand-colored cricket that flew up and then back; the red ants that poured into and out of dusk.



The Fish That Kaz Caught

It was streaked blue like a peacock feather; it fattened in the pan; I lit a candle; it was so fresh it tasted like rain; it filled the hollows; a sky spangled as dawn; it swam the channels in sequins; it swam the border between clarity and sanity; a lake arose in the middle of the city; peacocks left bright feathers on its shores; o fish mutiny against misery; fish depart through the other forms; a poem like a fish wants to be transfigured; the bones sit like hairpins in a bowl after the chorus line.



Sabine Miller whose latest chapbook, Cairns, can be found at Half Day Moon Press, accidentally spent the pandemic years travelling around Arizona and California. A travelogue is in the works.

 
 

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