Poetry by Sarah Pouliot
I stood in your garage, inhaling sawdust
like incense as you unveiled the new altar:
a dove and an olive branch etched into peeling
cedar, curled shavings scattered on cement
like split ends at a barber shop.
“There’s a sculpture inside every sapling;
my job is to set it free,” you told me—
voice as rusty as the metal bench I leaned on.
I didn’t know you were quoting Michelangelo
until “Taps” resounded from a bugle
and two men folded an American flag
into a perfect triangle—the day New
Hampshire’s bleached sky became
an ocean of arctic terns, white wings
coalescing behind their captain.
Now, I stand in your garage.
It’s cleaner than ever.
No shavings stick to my soles
as I glimpse the sallow glow of Christmas lights
Dad hangs with your hammer.
Sarah Pouliot is a poet from Titusville, Florida. She believes that poetry holds the power to bring stillness and meditative reflection amid life’s chaos, and she hopes that her writing can do this for you—even if only for a moment.
