Sarah Russell

Sidelines

The father of my children died this week.
We’d both remarried, but his wife
passed away a year or two ago.
What was my place in the final vigil,
announcement to friends, sorting
household stuff, paperwork?
I consoled, cooked, hugged my kids
and their kids. But it felt like being
in the stands, lamenting a football loss
that wasn’t even close.

 

February 2026

This cold, cloud-bleak day, I hike
the bottomland near the river
through scrub oak and thistle,
grasses, stiff and broken. My boots
shatter ice skims that hover over mud,
hard frozen. I pick up a shard, thin
s tissue, and it weeps in my hand.
Breakage has allure—destruction
and force, erotic. Why not
a shattering in this place where water
will have its way in spring and erase
the damage.
Two years ago, our country broke free
from moorings, sage voices drowned
by vandals wanting to trade the presidency
for dictatorship. Hard to build anything
these days but golden calves and temples
to avarice. Like Lot’s wife, I’m tempted
to look back, but ahead is a small rabbit,
crouched, ears low, still as stone.

 

Sarah Russell’s poetry has been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Third Wednesday, and other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has 3 poetry collections—I lost summer somewhere (2019),Today and Other Seasons (2020), and Emergence (2025) published by Kelsay Press. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net