Sally Fisher

LIBERTY ISLAND

                                   Captivity is Consciousness—
                                            So’s Liberty
                                                                    Emily Dickinson

1

On Stage

Durante
and crew
on chairs

rowing

Land! Land!
That’s the horizon
Let’s row for that then!


2

Skip Stones

like the Doge
at his ring toss

sea
oh sea

won’t you
marry me?


3

Cupped

in a cracked
ship

safe
in storm

far
from the rocks
of home


4

Drowning’s

what

a boat’s
about


5

If

we ever get home
it will be at sunrise

it will be
in a boat with eyes


6

A River

has no home

but a way
to get there

like the man sang
I’d rather be a river


7

Level

was the land
of my youth

I threw leaves
on the river

to prove
it moved


8

Quiet

as a cup
and saucer

elbows in my hands

while he tells
and tells

I am my cradle


9

Pharaoh’s Daughter

if I
go down
to the river

there will
be something
there

if I
don’t

there won’t


10

Cloud
breast
and cloud baby

adrift
wish
mouth to nipple
sift

very like


11

Narcisso

and I

seek his face
in the black water

I can’t find it

through mine

in the glass
over the canvas


12

I’m Here

to be the pane
of glass

between
orchids growing
and snowing


13

A Small Hall

is my eye
with a diamond’s
acoustics


14

I 

look down from
behind my eyes

I’ve climbed up inside
my own Liberty

see my huge arm
my torch


15

Memoirs

car wash!
tunnel of love!

everything happened
nothing hurt


16

Denunciations

the mailbox
is full of leaves

the lion’s mouth
is full of leaves


17

Leaves

throw their own party
on the way down


18

A Dragon

scoops
the wind

a boat
is born of a water hill
oar
digging in

not
the way things are
but how they move


19

Leonardo

made a credo

currents cupped
in cataract saucers
chaos rocked
in cradle water

water music

nonstop
coda


20

A Turtle

is a bound book

but a snake
is a mind and its wake   

© Bertha Rogers

Sally Fisher’s poems have appeared in Broadway Boogie, New Directions, Field, The Threepenny Review, Margie, Poetry East, Mid-American Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She has published two books for children (Viking and the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and a book about art for adults, The Square Halo (Harry N. Abrams). She is a student of improvisation, a stage clown, and a puppet builder and sometime performer. She lives in New York city where she makes her living as a freelance editor and print production consultant.