Sarah B. Cahalan

Sarah B. Cahalan writes about art, books, faith, natural history, the layers of places and how those correspond with our own layers as people moving through time and place. She has poems, current or forthcoming, in The Shore; the tide rises, the tide falls; Skipjack Review; and U. S. Catholic. Sarah is from Massachusetts and is currently based in Dayton, Ohio, where she lives with her husband, four children, mother, and a poorly-trained dog.

he asked me to throw him in the water

but I’m afraid he’s still sitting on a shelf. 

As my father died, he drifted 

in and out of believing, sometimes

storm surge, sometimes drought.

I had hoped to inter him more traditionally.

I called Our Lady of the Cape all the way

from Ohio, so Fr. would pay him

a visit. You have to catch the wave just right,

as lifesavers launching surfboats know.

Waves come in threes. In fact he raged

at the priest and also everything. I confess:

I was proud of his honesty. Nevertheless

(and this is where I cross myself) later

he saw a woman through his suffering —

I would never lie about this — a mother.

A mother called him over (though perhaps

it was the morphine drip). 

Which mother? His? I’m sure 

I can’t say for certain. 

But it’s in the medical records I have kept

with his urn, his watch, with his logbooks

in which he recorded sailing to the wreck,

to the creek, to the deep-dark places 

where bay gives way to ocean.

Read more of Sarah’s work in Solum Journal Volume IV.