As a child I'd dream of running away,
Nigh unto winter and not too far,
From Dad’s and Mom's, where I used to play
But which was now bitten hard.
A barn in a field was just one dream,
An old one where no one ever came.
Delight by myself, attainable seemed,
Where I could rest and collect my name.
Russet woods and graying woods,
Fueled fantasy and desire,
For simple things must do some good,
In corrupt towns, soul is renewed by fire.

Night so often brings a lack of force,
But in this other world
That hums alongside ours,
There is a golden line riding in the sky,
A horizontal meridian
That runs like a road,
Across the plains
Where invaders roam
And you should not travel
On your own.
So hang onto the line and fly
Above despair or fear,
Until you reach a darker cliff
And enter the realm
Of Pythagoras.
Along with his elfin helper,
Who spun the golden line
Steered by Pegasus.
And slung below the stars,
Thin as a spider’s web
And strong as steel,
He gives frail dreamers
Safe passage from world to world.
Above the winding roads
And forests of dark mist,
Those of Eriador, Earthsea and Hyrule
Sail like Odysseus past rock-bound isles
And Sirens’ songs and Loki’s smiles.
But what lies beyond those hills,
The dubious mortal asks.
To which the winged horse replies,
“Only those who dare
And trust me safely to consign
Will ever know where leads
The Meridian of Pythagoras,
The endless, golden line.”

I had dreamed of gentle hills who cloaked themselves
in emerald green, swathed in capes of moss
and bejeweled by Time with tumbled stone.
Sitting in a high window looking east,
Over damascene forests crowding,
I saw the waves hurl themselves on rocky shores
where hopeful pilgrims and adventurers
once landed, timorous at first
their linear minds and loud weapons braced
for battle with those who watched
from under shade of guarded forest.
I knew their history now, how they grew bold
and mowed down the ancients, wrecking paradise
until, for a time, it resembled the land they'd fled.
Decades rolled past with the confidence of the victor,
his rewriting of progress and the careless tramping
of feet, horses and railroads over human souls.
At last, what was forged by the invaders
became brief peace and prosperity for a time,
but descended into dictators and their subjects,
and people were mesmerized by moving pictures,
their brains turned to porridge with radio waves.
lulled by sweet, starry-eyed promises from the rich.
The chance of revolution has weakened
to the point of desperation.
La resistance lies in shadow, like a lion crouching
waiting for people to awaken, for the **** that frees.

Your life depicted on a grayish film,
With an ivory wand that sees through cells:
Two legs, long for such an age as yours,
Yet thin as winter sticks.

I could not predict that swelling of the heart,
And soul, felt long before other signs,
And even then, your soul hung in the balance,
For two or three heartbeats of mine.

Then it was decided by my lover and me
To keep you with us,
Through pain until, perhaps, eternity.

Now you are grown, surprisingly apt,
Pupil of ourselves and you,
Thinking on your own, you are prone,
To tell me things I never knew.

Your soul fills our world with joy,
Even in the darkest frame of mind,
Your longing songs about the boy
Who loves the girl he left behind
Fill the air with hypnotic ambiance,
Soothing the listener,
Making happiness a trance.

I heard about the sloop John B.
When I was fourteen.
I had learned to sail in a storm
And the story gave me daring,
Although I had lost control,
Tightening the sail
Instead of letting it out
In a sudden gale.
And just in time, a boat passed
With a man who shouted,
“Loosen the main sheet!”
As the boat heeled to starboard,
And I nearly capsized.
But discovered a fair wind
And the ease of a beam reach.
So my first time was the worst,
And best…
But adrenaline fueled desire,
To do this again and again!

Winter Storm Warning
For tonight, chance of snow:
Chance of conditions you do not know.
"Friday night, snowy, windy,
May last ‘til Sunday,"
Maybe one day,
You’ll be laid low.

Pack all the supplies you can,
Into a bunker or four-wheel drive van,
Throw in some extras, like a tire that's bare
And tell your kids, “Let’s go.”
But where? You pretend to know.

"Anywhere, anywhere I don't care!"
Away from the house with the giant tree,
That might fall and crush you, mother and me.
Away from power lines crackling on ice,
They’re explosive and electrocution's not very nice!

Up from Cape Hatteras,
Barrels the storm,
Where we’ve heard horror tales
Of strong gales and anxious watch,
Do we trust our lazy guts or the isobars?

On to New York,
Where they never quail
In the face of danger
Though the winds might wail,
Past Block Island with towering waves
To the Sound and the fury and gale.

We grit our teeth and batten the hatches,
Tell stories of worse weather watch to soothe,
Keeping voices low and emotions smooth.
Yet weather folks, hysterical, predict our fate,
Willing the worst, making us wait.

This time the flickering power stays on,
Our street isn't flooded
And the roof's not gone.
"All that fuss for nothing!" say the young and brave,
While you have that same dream of an old, rogue wave.

Airplanes on a Still Day

(Two in One Hour)

The sound softens
Something inside my brain—
Tangible, hypnotic,
Remote and forgiving,
Like a little Buddha within,
Or flying this sound trail
Through the draftless heavens.

The tiny drone
Rids the world of
Human clatter and its rush.

As a child, I savored it inside,
A sliding down the spine
And into the heart and through me;
A reverse of the rush of wine.

Back then, it was unquestioned, enjoyed.
But fifty or more years later, I asked why.
Time moved by and left no answer.
Nothing but a spring-like stillness aloft,
Unbound by seasons below.

But as I relished that sound this afternoon,
I felt the sense of spring again
In that aimless hum.
And knew at last why pilots sailed
In any weather, in crystalline air.

Up there, it was always spring,
Always sweet and calm
With promise;
A miracle that they ever descend!

If silence had a sound
Or utter calm
Were an elixir,
This would be its form.

I awoke in the desert
At night, with starlight
Illuminating the white sand.
There were sharp mountains
In the distance, with flashing lights
And beams that searched
All around me.
I crawled to hide behind a
Gnarled shrub that snarled
At me and caught my clothes.
And at last I fell asleep.
But woke to the same
Sand, white as bones,
But now, black-clad ghosts
Float past me, weaving
In and out of each other,
Their robes fluttering
In the hot wind and dust.
The only humans I see
are children,
Who scamper and smile.
Though they seem to be alone
And poor, they have their toys:
Pots and pans, old sticks and a doll’s leg,
Blackened at the  joint.
Perhaps children in some other place
Play with the rest of it, content.
But I notice that they are looking,
Always looking for something.
ماء! نريد الماء!
Ma'! nurid alma'a!
I want to answer
But cannot.
I don’t know what they mean.

At fourteen I learned to sail—
The difference between true wind and gale.
I learned that babies do not come from prayer
And wondered if we were all wanted,
As my mother often said.
At fourteen, I stopped myself from caring
What kids on the bus thought of me,
Or whether I ate school lunch alone.
How unnecessary had been all that fear,
When I learned that I liked myself
Without their praise.
At fourteen, I learned that other girls
Cared only about pimply boys
And the dates, rings and ownership each claimed.
What a small, unexceptional life, I thought!
But at fourteen, I was too selfish
To pity them, much less humor their desires.
At fourteen, I realized that my dad was imperfect,
When he dodged the excise tax on his car.
Did he commit this tiny sin to rebel
Against an unappreciative wife,
Or did he feel the vicissitudes of life
As I had just begun to do?
At fourteen, the world was opening
Like a lotus flower in a teacup,
Soon to spill over and fill my soul
With longing for passion and logic,
But for something else ineffable.
I would find in later years
That the wanting itself could be enough
To stir those depths into song or quiet joy.
Of all the things in my soul and mind
And in the world beyond, I would learn,
That the only absolute is inexplicable—
The only perfect, human thing is love.

Ten years of sunshine, fantasies, and song.
Nothing was right; nothing was wrong.
Suddenly you’re up against a wall.
It seems like everything or nothing at all.

When you were younger, things were what they seemed;
Bedtime stories and parent’s esteem.
Everyone said you were funny and enchanting.
You didn’t despair, were never wanting.

What happened to that perfect world?
Why are you now so scared?
Did it vanish in the morning?
Like a wistful vision, without warning…
Or was it taken from you by
A cold and pitiless world?
Did it make you shun the things that you once dared?

At sixteen, you’re just a little bit older;
The world seems much  harsher and it feels much colder.
But it’s still the same place,
Then why the sorrow in your face?
Do you think you should have been told?
Think anyone told him or her?
But it’s the same place it’s always been.
Ask your mother and father how they fit in!

It’s not easy on the outside, looking in,
You seek it for comfort, but that’s hollow and thin.
You’re a loner, despite all your friends,
And your pain doesn’t stop where the loneliness ends.
You can try all you want, to be one of them,
Yet you’re still just yourself in the end.

Emily, Emily, called back,
But not set free,
By those who worship
and study thee!

Summers see the young ones
Gather on your lonely grave.
Kissing with immortal tongues,
To desire they are slaves;

But you forgive them blithely,
tell them to proceed,
In your name and memory,
The one thing you knew not was greed.

-Sharon Talbot

If the food of love be poetry or not,
I only judge half our love
Yet, lest the happiness be forgot.

For every time you made me cry,
It was cancelled out by joy.
And after all, love continues to try.

To resurrect what we had before,
In a gilded autumn ignored; seeming lost
Yet love keeps tapping at the door.

If we could have one glimpse of the past,
Or wander in that magic wood again,
Would the memories let us pass

Into a locked garden and through the door
To open a trunk filled with gold,
And fill our hearts once more?

December 4, 2018

Glance out a northern window
and Winter suddenly beckons,
just five days after Solstice,
begging me to think again
on my habitual dislike.
The marble-white stratus above
looks as soft as a woolen blanket
covering all the strange things
outside this world's sky.
A vacant calm descends.
And I am content to be quiet
as the scene outside,
Bucolic and static as
A winter scene by Brueghel.
I trace the bare branches that weave
all around, seeming to huddle
near closed and shuttered houses.
They emit a silent desire to be known,
uncovered, naked models to the season
and sharp as a line drawing.
All the stillness leads to reflection
on the world we forget in summer,
the hidden moles and groundhogs,
insects that no longer irritate,
allowing us to cease effort
and sit at the table in the sun,
eating stew and drinking mulled wine.
But those of us who are curious
walk in the snow, hearing sounds
we never noticed: the crush of crystals,
the crack of frozen branches.
Or when the snow falls,
there is a softening quiet,
a restful pause in the air
and we are entranced, standing to listen
without effort, to the soundless sound
of mind without thought,
of Winter.

You know I love you
You must know all the things I do,
Big things, small things,
Despite your worry, I will not go.
But sometimes you annoy me,
With lots of small things,
Is it your way to avoid me?
Or do you miss the pain it brings?
Toilet seats, left up all the time,
Open ******* boxes all over the pantry,
Crumbs on the floor and ants in a line,
Towels stuck in the microwave; I'm angry!
Why can't you do these simple things?
It's not a lot to ask.
Don't get me started on your room:
Clothes and junk are just too much,
And in the other one, A Temple of Doom,
Your record collection sits untouched.
Downstairs, there’s a pile of tools,
filling up the dining room,
It'd be great if you used these "jewels";
You're so attached they should be in the bedroom!
They're just lots of small things,
Why won't you clean them up?
To me they're irritating things,
And they just keep piling up.
All the small things
Sitting here for twenty years.
Are they the talismans
Against your fears?
You used to bring me flowers
To show me that you cared.
Now you shop online for hours;
I sometimes forget you’re there.
When you ignore the small things,
I’ll dig them out of a pile
And see what money they bring;
You won’t notice after a while.
Maybe in twenty years more
I’ll have all these things
Whittled down and cleared
And we could be each other’s things
Once more.

Sharon Talbot - 2010-2024

Knock on any door
And you may hear the cries
Of children, deep within a house,
Whose parents smile at you
With that eroded grin we all know
Like the stony leer of a gargoyle.
And yet you can do nothing.
Not yet…

Visit any friend at their house
And hear the silent pleas
Of a wife and mother
Who endures the fear and pain
For reasons that mystify us.
At least now.

Walk the floor of any factory or boardroom
And you will see the man who bows to his master
While, at home, he treats his family as slaves.

Visit the mansion of any president,
Minister or king
And you may see the ragged masses
Of those who built the walls yet have no home,
Who work the farms and have no food,
Who tend a country and are refugees.

Thus, in the cry of any child,
The fear in a mother’s face or
Silent rage in a worker-slave
Or immigrant dispossessed
And you will see the tyrants who rule,
The fathers who strike and bosses who fire,

Yet all of these serve one master
With many names:
Property,
Greed,
Violence,
Primeval rank and…
Power.

To this power,
There is only one answer
And to alleviate the suffering,
of those oppressed,
Only one thing.

I wake up from a drugged sleep just at sunset.
It allowed me the luxury not to suppose
That I felt our love dying in the bright sun,
Your need fading with the oncoming dusk,
But could see myself resurrected in the rose:

That transient swath beneath the glow,
Just above the horizon.
It reminds me of times that were,
When I was myself and didn’t know you.
It is harder to remember than you know.

What a blessing to imagine I don’t care at all.
I’d forgotten how warming.
To breeze through the day in a comfortable way;
No more skating on glass, but letting them pass,
All the things that once were alarming.

Perhaps I’ll awake on some fresh morning,
Done now skirting the old and new
And you’ll come striding through the rising sun.
I’ll be myself again and you will be you
And we’ll go strolling as we once did, into the blue.

August 9, 2016

What is our maker, why does it put us here to die
What is Life if it must end,
What of our sense of beauty,
Of mesmeric minster air?
Or the way light bends on a summer afternoon,
The way the mourning dove croons,
If it must be taken all away,
When some of us must go and some of us to stay?

What is the love we feel,
For one another—deep, fearsome and real?
Why put it there for us to overcome,
Since the tension of love is not for some.
Or why take it into our hearts,
Only to wrench and stab us as we part?

Especially those who love only a few?
They open themselves to one or two—
Pour every part of their being into one soul,
Ignoring those who can't make us whole,
If only to watch it drain, or disappear as they depart?
Taking with them all our mind and heart?

Why do we expect an explanation
Of this cruel phenomenon,
The findings, trials and accommodation
That we build our lives upon?

And yet, with hope, however weak,
Stanching up our wavering hearts,
We tell ourselves we’ve found what we seek,
Something deeper than knowledge or art,
Until we are torn apart.

No religion can explain it.
Psychology tries and fails to name it.
We are creatures of mist and desire,
Of logic and deliberation,
Whose desperate brains whisper “Find a cure!”
And we wait only to have experts demur.

But deep within our harrowed souls,
We know that, for only a few,
Does this equation work,
And for the rest of us, it pales.
We plummet toward the hangman’s ****
And yet thank him for his gruesome work.

For our few bittersweet tales of life,
And that relief we feel comes at last,
Though we’ve no reason to believe it so.
We merely seek an end to the heartrending past,
Even if it just marks us as life slows.
And watches us as we go.

Does anyone care what happens to the lonely,
Or especially the aggrieved?
I doubt they do; they care about only
Themselves, their desires and taking leave.
Then they swiftly exit, and discard us—the bereaved.

Sharon Talbot
August 11, 2015

His plane sailed into a milk-white sky,
white mare's tails spiraling in pale water.
Mind and time became elastic as he
vanished away and then returned.
I look for days like this in winter,
with hints of soft sunshine
and opalescent clouds.
Sometimes the harshest season
is the kindest, and paints a scene
that soothes artist and lover,
when wishing hands part the cloth
of reality with dream.
Or when the earth itself
Seems to remember soft interglacials
And seasons seemingly spun
Like cotton candy to soothe
The wounds inflicted by us.
Earth is like the mother spider,
eaten by its young.

If I were not old
I would paint the house
and shore up the insulation.
I would go out and **** the garden
and cut down brush and vines
that have taken over the yard
and suffocated my flowers.
I would put in a metal fence
and plant roses around it.
But I am too old for that
and I may die here one day,
in a darkened room, caught
inside the crumbling plaster,
whose windows are covered by ivy,
which reaches its fingers across the walls.
It is almost as if the errant plants
strive to imitate the flowers
I used to bring inside and
place in bouquets to brighten
my world, no matter how small.
I shudder to think what will be,
now that the flowers are gone.

“I used to be disgusted,
Now I just have to refuse
The allure of money and status.
Before, I could be happy just being me,
Saying “No” to anything that I didn’t need.
But now, she’s told me I’ve got to choose,
Between her and the life I want,
Must either be a corporate shill
A shallow, capitalist dilettante,
Or be myself, and lose her good will.
I am so close to saying “’goodbye’”
And testing her just to see,
If she really means what she says,
Or if she has fooled herself
As I did for so long.
Trying to be like big brother,
Upright, moral and honored (by some),
But something in him was lacking
“And as I saw through it,
I knew I did not have the nature
To pretend I was that grand
Or could sink that low
in hidden plots to undo those he envied.

I watched her in the dim light
Of a place where the punished toil
And I was consumed with hatred,
And a wish to set her free.
How can I save her from this charade,
This bourgeois masquerade?

When she notices my clumsy efforts,
she asks me what it is I want and I reply,
‘All I ask is to practice in my own style,
Colorful but honest, riding the edge”;
Her response is inscrutable but
She likes it when I con the corporate ******,
And joins in with a new name and a sly smile,
We drink tequila and don’t pay,
Leave some loudmouth with the bill and
hedge our bets as we kiss in the evening breeze.

“Apparently, a kiss was more powerful
than me acting as an imitation drudge!
And a night in bed together satisfying enough
to draw her into my world.

I would show her little ways of breaking rules,
the cheat with no one noticing,
building up our own little universe,
rebelling against the system in subtle ways.
Oh! Those were golden days and I was happy.

Yet now, years later, she has gone far away,
perhaps for good, though I don’t see why.
When I call and ask, she will never say
what I can do to bring her back.

Granted, my life has turned around,
perhaps to something she dislikes,
but she leaves it for me to guess
whether it’s too flamboyant or just a mess.
Yet I refuse not to try so hard, hanging on the sound
of her cherished voice on the phone,
its flat, restrained notes telling me:
“You are alone”.
And still I love and hope.

Sharon Talbot
February 28, 2025

I was thinking about the blast
of neon colors in a film
and the New Wave Music
and Marie Antoinete pastels

But in my childhood
it was as if we had other hues,
a small box of crayons at hand,
or that the world was seen through
Kodachrome film.

There were lollipop reds and purple
and dungaree blues, lake and skies,
lemon ice yellows, setting suns
and lush summer green.

In scratched lenses, children seemed to play
as if inspired by the living colors,
imagining that their lives would last forever.
And even as they grow, it immortalizes them.

But, like life, the colors decay
and we gaze at scenes of sepia and moss,
with ochre grass and reds turned brown.
We must attune memory to remember more.

And using suspension of disbelief,
Elders, middle-aged and children gather
Like the neolithic ceremonies meant for gods,
But celebrate, not the stars or stones,
Rather the lives we have lived or have yet to taste.