Safe
When the vacuum cleaner roars,
the arthritic dog rushes
to a sandy much-dug space
where the fence right-angles
in the shade of the alder tree,
umbrellaed by near-ripe blackberry vines.
In the shadows, she makes herself
small with the dust and fallen leaves.
When too many hammers come at me,
like paper under the alphabet,
I sit among the dandelions,
mother-hugged by spruce and pine,
wind chimes singing in the wind.
I close my eyes and let myself
become a pinecone or a bumblebee.
Strong trees hold the fallen ones.
Lifting their heavy branches,
they call to us, “Come in, come in.”
.
Sue Fagalde Lick escaped life as a journalist in Silicon Valley to write poetry and play music on the Oregon Coast. She has published two chapbooks, Gravel Road Ahead and The Widow at the Piano: Poems by a Distracted Catholic. Her full-length collection, Dining Al Fresco with My Dog, a finalist in the Sally Albiso competition, is forthcoming from MoonPath Press in 2024. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, The MacGuffin, Cirque, Sage Soup, Cloudbank, New Letters, The American Journal of Poetry, and the recent anthology Into the Azorean Sea, featuring the poetry of Portuguese Americans. https://www.suelick.com.
Stone Poetry Quarterly 