sarah dickenson snyder / two poems

Voices

Where did she find 

this soul?

Maybe in the marrow 

of her bones, that first 

rib taken for her.

She does hear other voices—

first from above, 

the one sounding like wind 

or thunder. Then the softness 

of Adam's, that small knot 

moving inside his throat, 

a voice like rain song 

so different from the winged 

landing on branches or the hush 

of the snake. Her soul 

sounded full 

of certainty. It said only,

Fill yourself. Nothing more.

---

For The Boat

a Golden Shovel of Lucille Clifton’s “blessing the boats”

I remember the upheaval in the garden after the hurricane, may-

be it's always about the aftermath, opening the 

cellar door after the flood, the low tide 

and the small bones that 

wash up and all the missing that is 

like embryos let go, the entering 

of absence, of an old boyfriend's dreams even 

forty years later in the cathedral of what never happened. Now, 

the never cells, the 

lives never made, the lip 

of all the words of 

unsaid. In our 

love making last night, I was not understanding 

the miracle of a tilting planet carry-

ing the lucky ones, how little gravity you 

need to stay—does everything work out 

to being about the planet or its moon, the unseen side beyond–

the hungry stones, the pock-marked darkness, the

what’s-within-the-skin-&-skull of the face.

I’m talking of 

wanting to being done with fear—

how quickly I'm fine, how are you may 

come and there you 

are again in the generous alone, no kiss 

to awaken from myth. Maybe I want to find the 

unfolded instructions, the way a young boy constructed a wind-

mill out of almost nothing, then 

changed the lives of everyone he loved, turn-

ing the axis from 

one star to another, let it 

be an instrument, certain 

of where to place chains and wheels, let it 

make the music you will

hear, a sound to love 

again and again, the way your 

finger presses back 

to replay and replay. May 

you never tire of what you 

know and don’t know. The way you open 

the sky of you to let your 

worst thoughts be eyes on eyes 

and touch on touch, reaching to 

nakedness, diving into water,

to be covered by water.

Remember the wildness of waving 

trees, the invisible wind, a possible forever 

swerving, an uprooting, nothing where it was before and 

then—stilled. The huge maple lying on its side. May-

be I ache for altered space, the way you 

entered mine. The live wire in 

the street I could not touch. Your 

skin I could. How innocence 

can return, sail

in like the only boat to get through,

the way this 

world toppled over to 

make a better one. Yes, that.

---

Sarah Dickenson Snyder carves in stone & rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has four poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera (2019), and Now These Three Remain (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2023). Poems have been nominated for Best of Net and Pushcart Prizes. Work is in Rattle, Verse Daily, and RHINO. More at sarahdickensonsnyder.com.