Before the Light Slides By
A book of poems and drawings by Sarah Seabury Ward
Before the Light Slides By brings together the poems of an artist with a lifelong eye for nature. Sarah Seabury Ward shares her first collection of poems at the age of 87. Her challenges with dyslexia have made reading, writing, and linear processing difficult, but the natural world offers a language that speaks to her. As an educator, sculptor, and poet, her worlds come together in these poems. She brings the reader into the natural world through poetry. This book is available to purchase at Jabberwocky Bookshop.
Praise for Before the Light Slides By
"My wish is to see what I cannot," Sarah Seabury Ward writes in her poem, "Dusk." But that is exactly what she does in these poems. She sees beyond sight, sometimes beyond human language.
- Ruth Rudner, author of Ask Now the Beasts and A Chorus of Buffalo
This beautiful book is an affirmation of life, especially its wildernesses, including those inside us. Sarah loves best those things we are given that remain untamed, forever beyond our control.
- Alfred Nicol, author of After the Carnival and Animal Psalms
Sarah Seabury Ward seems to see, feel, and commune with nature as if it spoke to her - described itself to her - from its own awareness and vocabulary, through both human language and delicate lines on paper.
- Rhina P. Espaillat, author of And After All and The Field
An Excerpt from Before the Light Slides By
Dusk
Dawn frames purple, pink, white
the blossoming phlox and a few blue chicory
A doe looks up
we do not know each other
although we do
in this dawn moment
Could I be she - holding still
just beautiful
straight-legged and high stepping
her ears forward
fringed in soft brown
Neither of us moves with
a flicker of life
yet we have the flame to live
We are still
we do not move
or look away - our eyes
seeing into each other
Above me
wings of a bird
spill their shadow
at my feet
Dusk falls
with a crescent moon
leading to night
A young raccoon
climbs into the old oak's branching arms
puts his head on his small hands
the way I do when I sleep
He has a black furrowed forehead
as he watches for the dark to come
This young one with hunger for life
is silently stripping
the blueberry bushes, the stone fruits
and biting the green pears
until they fall rolling
on the ground
There is an earnestness, a stillness settling
like a becalmed wind
quiet in the dark
My wish is to see what I cannot
Where are my black eyebrows
to peek beneath?
Oh, planet, I wish to put my head down
on the oak's rough bark
cup my hands around hope
