Witness
The Dream
It might have been
a blue eye snapping
shut; your eyes snapped
shut and opened again.
Untitled
“…down the sea’s / dissolving halls.”
~Elizabeth Bishop
Once at a reservoir
I found a water cave
to climb that
pitched you through
to the held body.
Hard chute, dark
corridor toward
blankness.
At breakfast today,
my husband asked
why I love the open
water. It is the smear
where the sky breaks sea.
Slipstream
An abalone dish gleams through the river snapping a foot above it.
I scan the light for its other half as a bluegill waves past.
Freshwater clams will grow up to eight inches and live fifty years.
I reach into the movement, flashing the shell on my hand— a crushed can.
And the wind running through it
Float the horizon by red balloon
graph coordinates crested to parabola
slant fast in last light
release a cloud bank
sink to the opposite side
Goldfinch
Sandra Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a full-length collection of poetry from Sundress Publications and four chapbooks of poetry and lyric essays. Her poetry appears in Ecotone, Blackbird, The Hollins Critic, Southwest Review, Subtropics, and elsewhere. Essays can be found in Pleiades, Mid-American Review, Barrelhouse, and other venues. Sandy is the Poetry Editor at River Styx Magazine.