Barbara Sabol
Mapping the Borderlands
by Barbara Sabol
ISBN: 9781962405157
$14.00 (+ $4.63 US Shipping)
Barbara Sabol lives in Akron, Ohio, close to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, whose trails she knows by heart. She was named Ohio co-Poet of the Year for her sixth book, WATERMARK: Poems of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 (Alternating Current Press, 2023). Her book, IMAGINE A TOWN, won the 2019 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Poetry Prize. Other honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and the Arts Alive Outstanding Literary Artist of 2024 award. Barbara’s haiku and haibun have been published widely, and her haibun have been recognized by the Haiku Society of America, short-listed for a Touchstone Award by the Haiku Foundation in 2024, and awarded a 2025 Rachel Sutcliffe Haiku-Arts Prize. Barbara conducts workshops through Literary Cleveland and the Cuyahoga Falls Library. She earned an MFA from Spalding University. When not at her desk, Barbara is working in her garden or walking in the woods. She lives with her bird carver husband and wonder dog.
Luck Is Luck
I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on. —Jane Hirshfield
Hiking a gorge trail, I tripped, tumbled, landed hard. I lay there a long moment, my head spinning.
Ankles, knees, elbows sore but in working order. Looking up through the branches at the cloudless
sky, I gave thanks to the god of not-yet, who seems to follow me everywhere. Thank god, I
whispered to the trees, thank god.
Chance, like a change in the weather, turns. So often out of the blue. I think of the stray rescued
from a Russian street who spent one joyful day playing with the cosmonaut’s children, and the
next was blasted into space. They named her Laika— so close to Lucky.
shooting star
the impartial archer
draws his bow
To the Neighborhood Coyote
The neighbors whisper, menace, bandit. Have they held your gaze?
Glimpsed your rough coat in the brush? I’ve been warned to avoid
that end of the block where brambles and rotting logs reclaim the land.
new moon shadow shape shifts
At night, your low-slung presence troubles the air. It’s then
I am drawn to the hemmed-in mystery behind the rusted chain links.
Imagine a feral breath warming the back of my neck.
false alarm
the siren fades
to a whine
Lately, it’s all I can do to keep from peering over the fence,
slipping it, risking the briars jutting through. Are you there,
crouched among the high weeds? And if I find you, what then?
face to face the desilvering mirror
