The Sheltering Sky
Moon & Earth
I live by moon and tide,
the soar of spring, the neap.
There where the river’s wide,
beneath the cliffs, I sleep.
The spring tide surf is steep,
and after, not before,
the sea burns cold and deep
and never either or.
And on that rugged shore
the hammering tide of spring
will rise and beat and roar,
and cast its salty sting.
Zara Raab recently issued a new edition of her collection Swimming the Eel. She grew up in a remote corner of Northern California where her grandparents’ grandparents settled in the nineteenth century. She lives near the Powow River running through Amesbury, Massachusetts, and joins with the Powow River Poets in making song. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in THINK journal, The New Verse Review, and Religion and the Arts.
Jacob’s Ladder
Up here, we navigate the windy tide,
and swing on vines above the solid earth.
Our kind prefer it high, here where we bide,
to raft from branch to branch and nightly berth
on leafy boles, in awe of your mare’s tails
that, summers, dare to wisp a monkey’s girth,
in awe of light-pricked stars, as gales
keep rolling in from as far off as Perth.
All changed since our descent to earth, at last.
How wondrous you still are, on high, afar,
how you still fleck with ice, your clouds the cast
as yet of our imaginings, each star
shining in light extinguished eons past.