Esther Sadoff

Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Little Patuxent Review, Jet Fuel Review, Cathexis Poetry Northwest, Pidgeonholes, Santa Clara Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, among others.

November

Morning light rises and falls

like a boat careening on water, 

settling into the hummocks 

and valleys of waves,

into the sudden stillness 

where the sun performs

its balancing act, 

dispersing mist into crispness.

Outside, the crackling chirr

of birds awakening. 

I open the blinds to brittle 

cold, rusted street signs, 

hardening branches. 

There is no water’s surface 

to reflect pink now blue 

as we sail into day, 

no triangle of soft sunrise

trailing the stern as we glide. 

No undertow of moving silence, 

no renewing depths of sea. 

The trees flex in the wind. 

The trees tighten their roots. 

Looking Away

I look sidelong at the hummingbird, 

my view feathered by half shut eyes  

as it carries its house of delicate bones, the tip

of its tongue sipping from each flower’s crown. 

I avert my eyes from the bevy of gray rabbits

bedded under the clover thatch,  

from a young buck on the graveled path

proudly decked in spring regalia.  

I used to think I could make myself invisible 

by looking away, a skill more trusted than tried.  

I feared my eyes would tamp down that wildness,

startle the smallest scheme of finch or frog.  

I look away from the window pane, smeared gray 

with waves of rain, only glance at the cardinals  

dallying amongst spokes of grass, as if not examining 

too closely could make such goodness last.