Meghan Sterling
Cold Moon
In November, the night, with its salt lick
of moon paling the sky in waves. Tell me
again of the moon above your field. Here,
there is water shining from last night’s rain
like my grandmother’s favorite jewels. Her
sapphire ring peering from the woods, ancient
oaks like velvet boxes. Her emerald bracelet
circling the wrist of the house, howling like dogs
deep in winter’s hunger. The moon’s eyes
like a deer in the road, her soft feet padding
the black bough of pavement wet with stars.
Tell me again how the winter won’t crush us,
won’t starve us of love, the 14-hour nights
like a braid of my grandmother’s long black hair.
Sonnet for the Blue Nothing
This morning I feel it, a blue grown from nothing.
Water in the sky, water in the fields, last night’s
rain held to the morning’s quickening heart. This
blue—I dreamt it many times, held it in my hand
up to the sky that covered the sky, the color silk,
the color the blue of my daughter’s unexpected eyes.
I see it now in the water, everything I have ever loved
sprung from nothing, ground down to bone again and
again only to reform into all that I have. O, how to share
this gratitude for the nothing I come from! The long
white bones of my forebears’ limbs, carrying them
across endless water to land in the harbor of this blue
womb. I wade into the water to feel them all again, so
many loves gone. I wade in to feel myself returning home.
Bequest
All night, my daughter weeping. I woke up
to puddles in the street. After morning dreams
of balancing at the edge of a dock, it’s a still
and torpid Sunday. Heavy with invisible rain. I
see my death on the roofline. I watch it plummet
from the window. My last will and testament:
the little I have I leave to the pines—their stubborn
roots and silky needles shed along wooded paths
like a doll’s hair. My last will and testament: the little
I have I leave to the rising flute of my daughter’s
voice, calling my name in the cement dark. All
morning she shouts her sorrows into the fan blades.
They slice them into ribbons of vowels, thin as grass.
My last will and testament: the little I have I leave
to the rain that drowns the windowsills, the trees, tiger lilies.
Meghan Sterling (she/her/hers) is a Maine writer whose work is published in Los Angeles Review, Colorado Review, Rhino Poetry, Hunger Mountain and many journals. Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions), Comfort the Mourners (Everybody Press) and View from a Borrowed Field (Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Book Prize) came out in 2023. Her next collection, You Are Here to Break Apart (Lily Poetry Review Press), is forthcoming in 2025. Read her work at meghansterling.com.
