Sharon Corcoran
Sharon Corcoran lives in southern Colorado. She translated the writings of North African explorer Isabelle Eberhardt in the works In the Shadow of Islam and Prisoner of Dunes published by Peter Owen Ltd., London. Her poems have appeared in Braided Way, Canary, The Buddhist Poetry Review, One Art, Sisyphus, Literary North, and Bearings Online, among others. She is the author of two books of poetry, Inventory (2018, KDP) and The Two Worlds (2021, Middle Creek Publishing).
PILGRIMAGE
Missing from my belongings but not my memories,
is a polished clay jar sealed with wax and a tiny
label that declared the contents to be
water from the Jordan river, brought back
from a relative’s trip to the Holy Land.
The jar was four or five inches tall,
narrow-necked, round-bellied–
an amphora, with pewter-colored glaze.
Impossible, according to Heraclitus,
for this water to be from the Baptizer’s river,
goal of so many pilgrims–but still, close enough.
So how could I lose it except through a child’s indifference,
like so many outgrown toys,
when it should have been carried into old age,
with the almost meaningless scraps
of paper, photographs, trinkets called heirlooms.
Yet it’s gone, gone with the giver.
The water spirited into air, or spilled
from the broken clay to mingle
with the New World river near where I was raised–
where no one is baptized, no one is healed, and across which
no promised land waits. Yet I wait
to become the woman who dares
to follow a well-worn path toward a river
that’s nameless, and can’t be contained.
WHAT LIFE DOES
after Eleanor Lerman
This is what life does, if you’re born in a good time.
Elk cross the road leaving tracks but no presence.
Owls perch on the flag pole while sunset burns
in the background. Hummingbirds come to this desert
in April, not a flower in sight. This
is what life does. Or maybe
there’s nothing going on, but it feels like magic,
like starfish in a channel heading out to the sea.
Planets in a row.
Ghost elk passing through.
Hummers hover at my window to tell me
it’s time for nectar and feeders.
Because this is what life does–until someone else
takes over for me and gets to inherit
the whole shebang, because they too
are born in a good time, they too will wonder
if the tracks in the sand are a message,
or a sign of just another day.
Elk hiding, an owl’s silhouette, starfish drifting
out of the channel to the open sea.
Everything is a message, and just another day, because
this is what life does.
