Sharon Auberle & Ralph Murre: Porte des Morts

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crow and seagull

on whirling winds

a white orchid at the window

fading

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Dull olive of cedar outweighs other colors, rationed so carefully in northern winter. The ground is snow-covered; the sky gray; the bay, jagged slates, soon to be frozen. Slender crimson of osier, hue of salmon-flesh where the wind has stolen bark from birch. Rarely, salmon on the rocky foreshore to feed a gull or crow.

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Winter reminds us that all things come and go. There is freedom in what remains—the bones, the wind, bare branches. An old man dies on an island.

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out in the passage

a ferryman’s fog-signal

the great lake steaming

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by Sharon Auberle & Ralph Murre

Sister Bay, Wisconsin

And Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin

Sharon Auberle: Storm

All night a roaring of waves slamming onto the shore. All night a Wagnerian symphony of wind and water; now and then the thunder of a falling tree. I reach for you, burrowed deep under quilts. Through the night we lie there, listening, satiated with music of enormous gods. Finally, at dawn, the wind rests. Sun lifts over our porch, light gleaming like old coins spilled across the floor. At breakfast we watch heavy trucks rolling by, bearing broken limbs and trees. The sky is that color of diamond blue found only the morning after.

bodies of trees
their fragrance sweet
even in death

by Sharon Auberle
Sister Bay, Wisconsin

Sharon Auberle: Musca Domestica

When you investigate my juicy plum, when you walk the rim of my Riesling, when you buzz me, gleefully, in the middle of a nap, I try, O fly, to dig deep into the Buddha corners of my heart and find the sanctity of every living thing, though I have great difficulty with mosquitoes as well, not to mention earwigs . . . but I digress. In spite of your fondness for all things revolting, I want to spare you, really I do. You, with your Kafkaesque legs and eyes, even my pen you explore! Is there any place you dare not? But heed this warning, O small one: when you walk about on my paper, rubbing those questionable feet above my fresh poem, then, my inquisitive little friend, you are history.

afternoon
one fly
on the pane

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by Sharon Auberle
Sister Bay, Wisconsin

Sharon Auberle: Summer Passing

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The sky is filled with terns tonight, their red bills arrowing down into the water. Fishing boats wend their way home to the harbor, while on the dock a small boy runs, heedless of dark and danger. His father scoops him up at the edge. Old men sit alone. Two women wrap shawls about their white shoulders. For a moment, there is silence, all pausing to watch an impossibly pink moon rise up out of the lake. Lights are coming on, one by one, in the deserted streets. Even the corner tavern is quiet, and the wind, thinking of turning northward, stills itself for awhile.
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from somewhere
on the other side of the world,
autumn approaches

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by Sharon Auberle
Sister Bay, Wisconsin