Susan Dale

Susan’s poems and fiction are on Eastown Fiction, Tryst 3, Word Salad, Pens On Fire, Ken *Again, Hackwriters, and Penwood Review. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan. 



Courage
     By Susan Dale

Sleepwalker at the edge of a cliff

To step back to an old familiar
I must lock up my restless heart
And vow no longer
To  develop the film of would-be,
could be anticipations

Ah, long weary of clocks
tick-tocking backwards in time
Of  dry ghosts
Withering, crumbling,
Again, but again
I see them draped
In gray shrouds of yesterday
Fading, smelling of musty hopes

Feeling a heavy weight
But why?
Courage, being weightless

Beating with wide wings
to lift my soul with sails billowed
and ride over turbulent tides of fear
Past security’s shallow waters
And gamble everything on tomorrow’s turn of the wheel.


October
by Susan Dale

In the windows of October
Autumn stretches wide wings
Caught in a web, falling leaves, golden afternoons
So howls a coyote with hollow haunches
Through a orchestra of wheat

The sun with half-closed eyes
Saw summer daydreaming around the bend
And clouds with memories
Limp across the skies
To follow winds
Sad in the treetops
Winds with dolorous sighs
Singing their poems to me

A Door by Susan Dale

The door you walked out
      When you left
      Will not close
       So is left ajar
And I hear your footsteps
  Echo down a long hall
         To away

And yet does a faint light linger
    Between heart and hall
Glowing like the burning wicks
            Of candles
         In luminosities
       That leap and fall
Alas, melt into yesterday
When you went back to you