With Abandon
Once, grasping the horse’s mane, I raced
through waves of Juniper, sweet mesquite
the warm afternoon she bolted home
to straw bedding, tail a tangled mass
glistening with sweat destined to be cut,
boiled then woven with cotton, layered
into a mattress. My brother used to rock
himself to sleep on horsehair and straw
that rustled as his body shaped
the torment fueling each arc, kept us awake
with urgent crackling rhythms that eased
and finally lulled him into slumber. Curious,
this cradle embedded habit
that still propelled him back and forth,
back and forth though one day he would push
me away for laughing. I used to walk past
the dusty window of a taxidermy shop because cotton
billowed from the belly of a baby alligator
tipped over onto its side. I’d return to see again
how no one ever lifted it from the display
or sewed it back together.
….
This poem is from the chapbook The Moon’s Eye by Sheila Dietz (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/the-moons-eye-by-sheila-dietz/
Sheila Dietz grew up in the Netherlands, attended a Dutch school and began conceiving of the world in literary terns at an early age. Her family moved every 2-3 years, and she experienced all the chaos and dislocation that life entailed. The world she created by writing became her one true and safe home. Sheila has been a Bread Loaf Scholar. She has received an Individual Artist Grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Numerous poems in The Moon’s Eye appear in her collection The Berry and the Bee which won the 2023 Gerald Cable First Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. She received an MFA from Vermont College. She worked as a librarian at the New Haven Free Public Library for many years before retiring as Head of Reference Services. Sheila is the co-founder of the Salt and Pepper Gospel singers (from New Haven, Connecticut) which is reflected in her work which is often, though not always, spiritual in nature.
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