Sarah B. Cahalan
Periwinkles
Accidental stowaways to now, they slide,
unremarkably, about the estuaries.
The name itself opaque:
A flower? A Dutch fairy tale?
What color are they, even? Brown?
Unpin-downable, circumspect,
Gray? Holding on is something
they can do while moving,
Sealed against the sun, intently grazing
on fields of algae, on barnacle larvae,
Their homes perambulate the rocks,
the granite blocks with snail-sized
Seas that pool at every tide; an observer
might see herself inside.
Signatures
The harvest moon brings record tides,
& moon-snails play a part in this.
They sow the sand: meander-lines
That sprout and grow. & pods dehisce.
Theology
Gold ripples of grass against
squirrel-gray skies.
Light rakes from some low
diagonal.
Why can’t I see you, when
my face is pushed into
Your stomach, a child
might ask.
Sarah B. Cahalan (she/her) writes about natural history, hope/grief/faith, the layers of places and how those correspond with our own layers as people moving through time and place. She has poems, current or forthcoming, in Dark Mountain, Stirring, Trampoline, and others. Sarah is from Massachusetts and is currently based in Dayton, Ohio (USA).