Sarah Toomey
Poetry
Sarah Toomey is a junior at Harvard College pursuing a BA in English. Her work has been featured in Off the Coast Magazine, The Harvard Advocate, and other local and college-founded literary magazines.
Orzech Farms
In the blue barn, a ripe thing grows cold.
The road works up eastward, land-trust territory
and a bell is light prophesied. Embankment
down, you have to dig your feet in sideways to get to the spot
where the algae stream delegates jade orders to snow
and the melt has always just begun. No Spring, they say,
just fixtures of the new world and the other world in heat.
There is a steeple over that blue barn, there must be
in order for the young cows to produce milk. It goes this way
for monks and nuns, those times when it is easiest to want
for nothing, these times when it is even selfish
to put the sliver of another ancient moon in slow green ice
cycling somewhere over Vienna or Roxbury, Connecticut
for an old sow to regard when she feeds.
The road works up eastward, land-trust territory
and a bell is light prophesied. Embankment
down, you have to dig your feet in sideways to get to the spot
where the algae stream delegates jade orders to snow
and the melt has always just begun. No Spring, they say,
just fixtures of the new world and the other world in heat.
There is a steeple over that blue barn, there must be
in order for the young cows to produce milk. It goes this way
for monks and nuns, those times when it is easiest to want
for nothing, these times when it is even selfish
to put the sliver of another ancient moon in slow green ice
cycling somewhere over Vienna or Roxbury, Connecticut
for an old sow to regard when she feeds.
“ Both of my poems featured in this issue—as well as the vast majority of my other poems—are for my mother, even though she will never see them. I’ve always found that place and person go hand in hand. ”
Kaaterskill Falls
Gold comes up. Sooner or later, it all does—
you think you see the cranes coming down
from New America, or the loose-skinned fish
beating back those two tiers like copper
dowsing rods, everything looking
for a paltry bite to eat, or a grandiose place
to begin. Concord is here, and hiding—
somewhere behind the sheet algae,
a pair of workman’s boots, the pressure
of a penny being pressed into the forehead
of the hillside, the industrious sun waking
and walking his funny rope back home.
But gold comes up, and other suggestions
blasted out in yellow, too, and soon
red is the whole front, building steadily. Soon,
the belly of the valley shaves out to flat sides
and the birds like contented nameless blots
feed with that hot iron expectation, and the fish
swoon in their pockets, sifting through
the minute, the rupture, the good gold exit.
you think you see the cranes coming down
from New America, or the loose-skinned fish
beating back those two tiers like copper
dowsing rods, everything looking
for a paltry bite to eat, or a grandiose place
to begin. Concord is here, and hiding—
somewhere behind the sheet algae,
a pair of workman’s boots, the pressure
of a penny being pressed into the forehead
of the hillside, the industrious sun waking
and walking his funny rope back home.
But gold comes up, and other suggestions
blasted out in yellow, too, and soon
red is the whole front, building steadily. Soon,
the belly of the valley shaves out to flat sides
and the birds like contented nameless blots
feed with that hot iron expectation, and the fish
swoon in their pockets, sifting through
the minute, the rupture, the good gold exit.