Friendship in Midlife by Sarah Wolfson

March 30, 2022
Poem name: Friendship in Midlife Poet name: Sarah Wolfson Poem begins: Surprising and gelatinous: suddenly seeing an octopus up close. Arrives in the middle of things: marriages, diseases. Hesitates and flourishes in the uncertain pattern of a dog lost in the city of its own residence. Traffics in fractal, tentacle, constellation, unset collarbone. Gets undone. Comes home. Rebuilds with interesting materials: lost socks, gills, old news. Allows moss to cover what it will. Does not see lichen as decay but as a sign of good air. Like your grandmother’s enormous aloe: is prepared for burns but also just to grow in whatever light is given. Shares a common grief for conflicting conditions: here an emptiness, there an over-brimming. Sees a common nuthatch out different windows. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Sarah Wolfson Previously published in Sporklet (Issue 16, Summer 2021), a publication of Spork Press. Sarah Wolfson is the author of A Common Name for Everything, which won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry from the Quebec Writers’ Federation. Her poems have appeared in Canadian and American journals including The Walrus, The Fiddlehead, TriQuarterly, CV2, Michigan Quarterly Review, and PRISM international. Originally from Vermont, she now lives and teaches writing in Montreal.