The windowsill’s peeling paint sheened
by fall’s thin frost, slick in the moonlight,
feet balanced narrow on the ledge.

You know the window I’m talking about.
We’ve all been there, high up in the tower,
and fear and anger and pain denied the key
so long you forgot there was a door.

Never mind all that.

All those long years alone you honed your only skill,
forged interest to an unmistakable gleam
and threaded your songs like rings, out
into the listening trees. They’re your only audience,
your only allies, and tonight as the wind rises
they offer you a choice, the sea crashing far below
too rucked to reflect the moon.

Well I don’t know about you. I did what I had to:
opened, and leaned into that night where the dark
folded me in like the feathers of a swallowtail’s huge wings,
riddled with shades of twilight and twelve o’clock
midnight threaded with stars.

[Sarah Sadie blogs the intersections of theology, poetry and the kitchen counter at the pagan channel at patheos.com. An editor (www.cowfeatherpress.org) as well as writer, her poems appear in places such as Midwestern Gothic, Literary Bohemian and Literary Mama, to name a few. Her poetry has received the Wisconsin Fellowship Of Poets’ Chapbook Prize, the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Lorine Niedecker and Posner Prizes, and a Pushcart Prize. Her collection, Somewhere Piano, was published in 2012 by Mayapple Press. She is one of two Poets Laureate (2012-2016) of Madison, where she lives with her husband and two children.]