Hollyhocks
Boisterous red and pink
hollyhocks flourish
only in sidewalk cracks
neglected
volunteers who paint
the hot afternoon
in brilliant strokes.
No one I know
can get them to grow
in well-tended garden beds.
I’d like to claim
that I’m like them
but they are
much wilder
than I can
imagine.
Domestic Life
My mother folded
an unfitted sheet
the only kind
she could handle.
With each fold
the house lost a room:
kitchen, pantry,
dining room chandelier.
The third floor vanished
with its claw-footed bathtub
flutter of maple leaves
and even my Russian grandfather.
I held one edge of a sheet
with each fold
wondering who would vanish first
my mother or me.
Luna Pier
is curved like crescent moon scimitar
winds along Lake Erie
where the intrepid or ignorant
wade out towards autumn’s horizon.
In the backwash
huge lotus leaves strain to catch
some oxygen, keep roots in fetid water
alive with photosynthesis.
Behind the lighthouse
coal plant and nuclear power
alike release their artificial clouds
of steam up toward the stratosphere.
A few white waterlilies float
like the thought of enlightenment
on the tense surface of
these polluted waters.
Miriam Sagan’s most recent poetry collected is What Solitude Sees in Me (Casa Urraca, 2025). She has published over 30 books of poetry, fiction, and memoir and works as part of the creative team Maternal Mitochondria with Isabel Winson-Sagan combining text with visual art.
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