Monday Poems: "Sarabande" -- by Norma Cole

“and then looks at

the stars” from the

bed in the ambulance

looks up at boughs of

trees shifting quickly

lit in blackness

blackening soft, deep

siren’s song—she died

several times that night

and only in the weeks

to come started and

started to come back

then forward which is

real life

*     *     *     *     *

Norma Cole is a painter, translator, and poet who has authored several collections, including: Natural Light (2009), Spinoza in Her Youth (2002), The Vulgar Tongue (2000), and  Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems (2009), in which the above poem is printed. 

Cole has been awarded a fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Gertrude Stein Awards, the Robert D. Richardson Non-Fiction Award, among other awards. She lives in San Francisco and teaches at the University of San Francisco.