Tag Archives: Sharon Scholl

“December” by Sharon Scholl

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i

The cottonwoods come down
last among the shedders,
come in piles like leather napkins
folded brown and gold.
Wind swirls them into speckled hills,
mattresses for leaping children.
I’ve watched the cutting loose
as each twig cast its fate on air,
the whole like silent snow,
space a-flutter with gentle death.

ii

There are things we can’t hold onto,
joys that slip from our bodies
at the stroke of time.
They float quietly away
beyond the comfort of grief. We pull
them from our minds, bend over them
like firelight, warming old bones
in the radiance of what used to be.

—

Sharon Scholl is a retired college professor of humanities and international studies. Her recently published chapbooks include Summer’s Child (Finishing Line Press) and EAT SPACE (Poet Press). She convenes A Gathering of Poets, critique group of a dozen local poets celebrating our twelfth anniversary.

Nightscape by Sharon Scholl

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When you reflect on darkness,
that it doesn’t thrust forward
but shrinks to secret corners,

when you see how birds
fold languidly into it, cheeping
softly in their feathers,

the way cats’ eyes expand, yellow
pupils taking furry draughts
of its enticing blackness,

how it spreads its viscous skirts
over jeweled windows and ruinous
gutters, over kisses and slaps,

washing over feasts and graves,
leaving every absence filled,
every sorrow lost to dreams,

it is oddly understandable
why the weary old, the damaged
do so calmly come to death.
—

Sharon Scholl is professor emerita from Jacksonville University where she taught the western  humanities courses and non-western studies (Africa, Japan).  Her chapbook, Summer’s Child, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.  Single poems appear currently in Adanna, Caesura, and Kalyna Language Press.  A musician/composer, she maintains a website that gives away free music to small choirs. She lives in Atlantic beach Fl.