Author of “How To Study Birds,” a chapbook collection in its second run from Dancing Girl Press, Sarah Gardner is a poet and teacher whose work has appeared in many distinguished journals. She has received fellowships for her writing from Blue Mountain Center as well as the Vermont Studio Center. Her recognitions include an International Merit Award from The Atlanta Review and second place honors from the Juniper Creek poetry contest. She has been proudly affiliated with Houston’s Writers in the Schools, a program the brings creative writing instruction to at-risk youth. Currently she lives in Iowa and teaches for St. Ambrose University. Sarah holds an MFA from Syracuse.

What Writing Is

Quiet thoughts grow crowless. Silver rustle,
floodline spindle. Finally, the water

faces itself: a rock glossed naked where
the current parts, storehouse of a broken peak.

Every tree here is a locked box, every thorn
a collar buttoned to the top, and yet

among the mosses: wild garlic, thyme.
Being conversant, I know all exchanges

begin on the tongue. Being human, I want
a taste. I have been along the nettled bank

and so have seen beneath the canopy, where
wasps pit their young in a paper hurricane

dry as a pharaoh’s heart a thousand years
in an earthen jar. None so born grow on honey.