An award-winning author, poet, and emeritus English Professor, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared many literary magazines, journals, and anthologies including Danse Macabre, The Galway Review, Lothlórien Poetry Journal, Ekphrastic Review, and Sparks of Calliope. Warner’s collections of poetry include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori: A Chapbook Redux, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps, Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction 2019-2022, Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci (1923), and Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. His newest collection, Abraxas: Poems, will debut in 2024. Presently, Warner writes, hosts/participates in “virtual” poetry readings, turns wood, and enjoys retirement in Washington.
Half-crescent Scurboga
We sat by a patio firepit
faced the Hood Canal fjord
cooked s’mores waved frozen finger over flames
listened to squawking seagulls dropping
clams and mussels upon the rocky shoreline;
bar-b-cue smoke floats overhead captures our attention;
gazing across the promontory our eyes witnessed
the iridescent sky stripe we clinked beer bottles,
toasted the divine path frequented by holy spirits,
slurred tales about mythic
chromatic bands until dusk.
No pot of gold rested
beneath that rainbow arc
rooted in oyster beds at the peninsula’s tip
where western red cedars climbed graded hillsides;
ultraviolet sunrays assaulted water dew drops
passed through nature’s prism that bent and broke
into a multicolor ribbon red, orange, yellow,
green, blue blanketing treetops, curling—
piercing granite-grey clouds disappearing
like half an arch bridge
engulfed by a vapor wall.
Shadow Lovers
One noir photograph
eternalizes a meeting
of minds where the construction worker triad
share a single bench unified in a heavenly enterprise.
Three heads
tilt towards an eclipse, daring
sunrays to penetrate disposable ultraviolet glasses
stardust denial makes them invisible.
Six eyes
embark on an earthbound space quest
jaws drop and morph into crooked cosmic grins
their awe curling into circle-like pop bottle lips.
Eight limbs—
crossed arms and limp legs—signal earnest,
express unwavering determination to observe
a solar eclipse at the end of its 18-year cycle.
Ten fingers
per person spiral, create fists, clasp armchairs
fold in laps with all the reverence of church pew
parishioners lost in celestial vespers.
Knuckle Dance
A strawberry moon illuminates night skies
glances off my crimson hooded puffer jacket
shields my head from starshine intoxication
as I poke digits through warm cherry sleeves
revealing solar mittens adorned with planets,
comets, meteors, satellites, and asteroids
knit during early hours by an ancestral hand.
Fluorescent red shoelaces guide my footsteps…
I touchdown on lanolin rich knuckles softly,
tickly, nimbly as I begin to gyrate between joints,
drifting like a hot air balloon over Albuquerque,
resembling Octoberfest in the Land of Enchantment;
aerial craft shadows trailing close behind melt
into the pitch backdrop my penultimate journey.
As determined and annoying as a buzzing blow fly,
my elementary footwork takes on adolescent urgency;
frolicking alone pales next to holding another’s hand,
exchanging today’s fascination with vast galactic fingers
and onyx rings—cavorting across the galaxy immersed
in solitary jigs and reels—for tomorrow’s pair dance
flaunting underarm twirls, pledges, bands, and guarantees.
The Galway Review 