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Sally Wilder David

When the hundred-foot tsunami came
elephants broke their chains
and lumbered to higher ground.
Tigers leapt and bolted,
not stopping to dine.

The birds had flown hours before,
one-hearted: North.

Eager to lose the world
and save their kind,
the wisest fled.
No pillar of salt.

*

Our bird grew silent in lockdown.
Neither dawn nor dusk.

When we froze at the threshold
between the world of things
and a baffling death,

he listened from his perch
for the absence of planes

then shot for the widening door.


One look
and he accepted the expanse
unqualified—
the sky never studied—yet home
to his faster heart.

Up.

—
Sally Wilder David (Mrs. Frederic Weinstock) has published in The Worcester Review, Anthology, 3Elements Review, Athena, Voices (international anthology; Israel), Silver Needle Press, Scarlet Leaf Review, Ekphrasis, The Anglican Theological Review, Pensive (Northeastern University), ArLiJo, Pegasus (Kentucky State University), and other publications. Sally earned Honorable Mention from Writer’s Digest and First Prize in a Worcester County Poetry Association contest judged by Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver, and she is a recent winner of the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. She studied with David Wojahn, Madeleine DeFrees, Patiann Rogers, Mark Doty, and Paul Smyth and has corresponded with many notable thinker and writers, including Bill Knott and Richard Wilbur. Her chapbook and a larger volume of poem are ready for publication.

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