Two Poems by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

THE VOLTA

There I was
making a basket
with the hem
of my T-shirt pulled up
to carry the fallen apples.

& then
a distance
shortened.

I’ll tell you what
I don’t remember—

something fell
out of me
when I found out
we all leave.

What was carefree
dropped its shiny seeds
into the sad
of not-forever.

A loneliness,
this anguish—

like moving through
a wideness of air
wingless.

*

DECEMBER 13TH

Taylor Swift & I have the same
birthday. Everyone loves her,
her lyrics so specific: the red scarf
she left in her ex-boyfriend’s sister’s drawer,
her pain finding a page & lifting into a song
to fill a car, like a murmuration of memories
whose underwings catch the sun & so the sky
glistens with them, feathered & swelled over the bridge
as I wait for the light to change. Now that I’m retired
I slow down at yellow lights, have time to wait, I might
see a bald eagle or find the perfect prime number
on a license plate, time to look for saints & think
about the close-to-gone, the snow’s forgiveness
or string theory—there might be even smaller particles
than the electrons we cannot see, tiny strings to name
inside the tiniest thing—a raw almost-nothing vibrating.
                                   Sometimes I think I feel it or hear it.
The way when I was five, I sat with Mrs. Stewart
at her desk during nap time because I couldn’t sleep,
the two of us in a dimmed, breathing room,
a green gooseneck lamp arced between us,
our pencils making marks, a small sound
of lines & curves unearthing. Her face
bent down, the pillow of breasts
in a flowered dress. That infinitesimal
vibration between us, between the page
& me, between a gliding eagle & me,
between the falling snow & me,
between Taylor’s voice & me
in this car on this Earth,
everything a part
of every string.

*

Sarah Dickenson Snyder carves in stone & rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has four poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera (2019), and Now These Three Remain (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2023). Poems have been nominated for Best of Net and Pushcart Prizes. Work is in Rattle, Verse Daily, and RHINO. sarahdickensonsnyder.com