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Cardinal Points

~ Poetry By Sandra Sidman Larson

Cardinal Points

Author Archives: Sandra Sidman Larson

Under the Fully Dressed Trees

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Seasons

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Minneapolis, Minnesota

Under the wingspan
of summer evenings,
neighbors rest in families
performing their supper rituals,
and fully dressed trees harbor
crows cawing to each other.

Elms fated for removal
are ringed in orange.
A young couple, oblivious
to warning, comes out
into the patient evening;
only themselves to consider
as the light lingers late.

Soon evenings will collapse
when fall twists
and passes the equinox.
Efforts will turn
toward comfort—
the lamp on the page,
and the moon at the window.

The clock, a windmill
of minutes, pointing
its hands at dusk,
will remind us
summer evenings
are only
a borrowed necklace.

Spring Haiku

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Seasons

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Outside my window
Buds swell on the old willow
My world leafs again.

How the Endless Summer Ends

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Love and Lust, Politics, Seasons

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Daisies still smear the soft meadows
lying outside my living room window.
Petals of the heliotrope have almost given up,
lie limp in the shade. Summer is aging.
Soon loosestrife will take charge.

The telephone man is here, talks
incessantly as he installs my second line.
You know what goes on in Washington
in summer—those politicians in large boats
out on the Potomac squeezing the buns
of sweet young things? I hate even the thought
of politicians, don’t you?

Boats adrift, the sun’s haze seems
to ripple the surface of the water,
not much breeze. Looking out, I respond,
I don’t think about politicians much
anymore.

Outside my window, marsh grasses
Bend in small gusts of wind,
arch as if in ecstasy.
Like some sleepless revelers
the crickets never seem to quiet,
their chorus rising to a crescendo

of summer’s end, and isn’t that the faint
sound of a band rounding the corner,
one last dah-thump, one last thrust
of daisies, one last night
for the heliotropes almost
exhausted from it all.

Botanical Trail Markers: A List Poem

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Seasons

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Glacier National Park, Montana

High brush huckleberry
greet me on the open slopes.
Common beargrass lures me
to the streams where parsnip
and wholeberry hide in the shade.
Colorado columbine climbs along t
he canyon trails marked with wide fruit
mariposa lilies, their purple stains.
Goldenrod and paintbrush also color the path.
Yellow monkey flowers and elephant heads troop
along beside purple monkshood praying
in the shade of fringed gentian
at the meadow’s edge, while harebells
sound in the breeze and turn my thoughts to wild
blue phlox and my heart to fireweed.

After the 4th of July:

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Seasons

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weather gets sweatier
there is scum on the ponds

insects bounce from limb to limb
slapping of skin begins

fruit ripens
our tongues lick the honeyed rim of the moon

shy evenings linger in doorways
lovers love the warm nights

and there is still time for remembering
before long, inside weather returns

The New World

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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Dark burnished bronze skin
covered his whole lean body.
That was all he was wearing, standing
on the front lawn of the Montclair Art Museum.
He was a young boy, probably about my age
when the sculptor had fashioned him.

I stood there staring between his legs.
A small limp stick resting on a sack of marbles
where a slit was supposed to be.
All the leaves in the large maples rustled
like a grandmother coming upstairs.

He seemed comfortable wearing only himself,
oblivious to my gaze. I suddenly saw
words pass by in my head: My father is like that,
all the boys in my school are like that,
all the boys in my class standing right here!
How do they stand it?

My second grade teacher, Mrs. Lowe,
hurried us on. “Let’s go inside, children,
so many wonderful pictures to see.”

I dutifully stopped in front of all the paintings
and felt their colors wash over me, but what
I was really thinking about was outside:
how, just now, I had divided in two.

Published in Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2003

Stirrings

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Love and Lust, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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The wind blows hard among the pines
Toward the beginning
of an endless past.
Listen: you’ve heard everything.

Takahashi, “Wind Among the Pines”

Canberra, Australia

Outside my hotel window here
in Canberra, so far from home,
wind moaning through the pines,
orgiastic memories
haunt me
like an amputee
trapped in the attic
of her body,
who dreams of walking
on her own two legs.

I have my ear
pressed to the wall
listening for cries of passion
from a bed next door
the soft padding of feet
across the floor.

Published in Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, 2003, Pudding House Press chapbook series

What I found when I opened my locker 3-26-30 after a long absense.

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Life Reflections, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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I am surprised by finding:

John Berryman under a rotting bathing cap,
one tan sock, a gray towel,
six shades of lipstick (amber, dusky pink,
wildfire, etc.), tights that are surely now
too tight, two outdated T-shirts—
one with the phrase: 1986,The Year
of the Executive Director

and the other one, green and gray—
our class colors—from our last reunion
when we marched over the hill
trying to believe it—
Fine Wine, 59—and
even my old running shoes
which took me around the lakes
by upside down trees
and through half marathons.
Ah, and here, finally,
my good intentions—
to keep moving.

Whistling Girls and Cackling Hen, 2003, Pudding House Press Chapbook Series

From my Window I Watch a Carpenter Building the Condo Next Door

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Love and Lust, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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That skywalker in the orange hardhat
has blond hair. It’s lying
damp on the nape of his neck.
His ebony back glints in the sun.
Runnels of sweat run down his sides.
Only his armpits hint of a lighter shade
of skin. He is a hula dancer
with a skirt of hammers, tapes
and other tools of his trade.
His thighs crowd against his cut off
jeans as he nonchalantly turns
his back on the height of
his predicament and mine,
but I’m not done with
this carpenter yet or
this precipice.

Published in Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, 2003 Pudding House Press chapbook series

I Finally Fired Him

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Love and Lust, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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I am ink-deep in my bookkeeper, he
stands at my office door, accounts in hand
but the numbers will never compute
nor revenue cover the expense
of coveting his innocent blue eyes.

The spread of my imagination
undresses him here on the desk, a bed
of indecipherable desire to let go,
buttocks on wood. What would happen next?

My staff in outer rooms rifling through papers
would be less surprised to see a whale walk
in, his scissor teeth chewing through
all of our transparencies and behind him
a Souza of secretaries waving their dictations
of oughts, musts and shoulds.

As for me, D-based, I say, spread the sheets,
turn the tables, rebel, excel, paradox.
I won’t get caught while the janitor mows
the short hairs on the lawn, he will not see
me covered with this extravagant lust

for a bookkeeper whose lack
of experience will cause us all certain
trouble. But I am set to ring like
an old cash register. What does it matter
that it doesn’t tally? In this hour
of fire, I will hold on to the edge
of the desk, waiting for a knock at the door,
the firm grasp of my auditor.

Published in Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, 2003 Pudding House Press chapbook series

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