I feel myself moving
deep into feeling
only now the words
are a memory what
I said to myself what happened
in me not long ago
as I sat late as now
at the table working
on a draft of something
searching for it
as the robin must search
for movement in the
earth and the robin is part
of the poem I was writing which has
a tangled narrative
going one way then another
non-sequential though
there is a sequence
a now and a then
a morning and a night
–
Hilary Sallick is the author of Love is a Shore (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2023), long-listed for the 2024 Massachusetts Book Award; and Asking the Form (CervenaBarva Press, 2020). Her poems are in Permafrost, Potomac Review, Notre Dame Review, Ibbetson Street, and other journals. She served as vice-president of the New England Poetry Club from 2016 through 2024. A teacher with a longtime focus on adult literacy, she lives in Somerville, MA. (www.hilarysallick.com)
© 2025, Hilary Sallick
Halfway Down the Stairs 