Dancing Limbs
After Alicia Ostriker
There’s something about the
light slanting through the afternoon
agitating dust motes while I
see again how tree limbs danced
in winter winds naked
shaking every which way with
my rage and longing for you.
Dancing Birds
After Alicia Ostriker
I know how to fill the
last moments of my last afternoon
in the place where I
learned how birds of paradise danced
wings extended breasts naked
black eyes blazing with
coals I meant to bring to you.
Sheila Sondik is a poet and printmaker in Bellingham, Washington. Her poems have appeared in Calyx, The Literateur, Floating Bridge Review, and other journals and anthologies of western and Japanese forms. The two poems above are part of a series of “golden shovels,” in which the lines' last words comprise, in order, lines from some of the first poets who delighted her.
