Venus and Jupiter so close in the eastern sky, 5:45 am, a little early for me just as the neighborhood starts to wake. Viewing it with you as if a celestial show put on for our delight, like Stravinsky’s The Nightingale a few evenings ago at the opera—all chinoiserie, a boatman in a boat on a river of blue ribbon beneath stage moon.

two kids       in one sleeping bag—       Perseid shower

—Previously published in Miriam’s Well (25 August 2014); republished here by author’s permission

Miriam Sagan

is a U.S. poet, essayist, memoirist, and teacher. She founded, and serves as director of, the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College. In 2010, she was awarded the Santa Fe Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.

She is the author of two dozen books, including Searching for a Mustard Seed: A Young Widow’s Unconventional Story, which won the award for best memoir from Independent Publishers for 2004; recent poetry collections, Map of the Lost and Tanka from the Edge, as well as earlier collections, Rag Trade, The Widow’s Coat, The Art of Love, and Aegean Doorway; and a novel, Coastal Lives.

A founding member of the collaborative press Tres Chicas Books, Sagan has lived and worked in Santa Fe since 1984.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Miriam’s Well: Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond, a site where Sagan publishes poems, both her own and those of others, as well as interviews and posts by guest bloggers

⚡ Gone, a poem by Sagan in Cleaver Magazine (Issue 1, 4 March 2013)