The
Poetry Of Becky Sakellariou
Corners
My sister sees
a teenaged deer
sidestepping to the salt
lick on the hill
behind her grand
gabled house
in the northern
woods of Idaho.
My brother
hears young coyotes
bark across
the flat red
New Mexico desert
he fled to
after his brief
New England exile.
I watch baby goats
butt the dry bellies
of their mothers,
shorn in the heat
of the relentless
Mediterranean sun.
We make three corners
of a world, the incomplete
map of a family,
the last piece
missing, a sister
who decided
to unbecome
a sister, sissoring
her corner off.
I know
that she listens
for the tiny foxes
that roam
her deep Vermont
forest, burrowing
their gold flecked noses
into their mothers'
warm red fur, searching
for what they
remember.
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Crows
Mary knows the names of all the plants,
the tiny buds, the bird calls through the bush,
what will come next season.
Maxine knows the animal spores, the dog's love life,
how to keep hay from rotting, what she wants.
Donald knows about old wood, forest smells, grass stains
on the carpet, living with the dead.
I know that this sweet world
slips soundlessly under my skin,
curls around my ribs, carries me
to when the crow burst from my breast bone,
rose and swept across the sky
gathering his tribe, calling and calling
so I would never forget his tongue,
the night I was born.
Tonight the crows speak again
as they do whenever I arrive, as they do
when I am not here.
Each morning across these worlds,
always within the sound of memory,
my longest dream.
"Crows" was originally
published by White Pelican Review in 2004 taking first
prize as well as being nominated for the Pushcart Prize
in the same year.
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Becky Dennison Sakellariou was
born and raised in New England and has lived all her adult life
in Greece. A teacher and mediator/counselor, she has recently
published in White Pelican Review, Beloit Poetry Journal and
Common Ground Review. Nominated for the Pushcart Poetry Prize
twice, she also won first prize in the 2005 Blue Light Press
Chapbook Contest for her chapbook, The Importance of Bone. At
present she is madly in love with her three grandchildren and
is often found puttering with great delight on her one acre on
the island of Euboia where olive, fig, almond, pomegranate, lemon,
apricot and eucalyptus trees grow amongst the wild sage, oregano,
rosemary and thyme, endlessly astonishing and inspiring her.
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