Familiar Stranger by Eva-Marie Sher

The crow on the horizon you see in the eyes of the Trappist…
from The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford

I travel the grief
of my ancestors
inhabit their in-
folded nightmares
their dark nebulae
—am shepherd
without sheep
visionary
without vision
I press the
shape of my
dreams into the
hollow of my
grandmother’s
gilt mirror
assemble my
self from the
scraps
of her proverbs
am the mask
leaning
on the mask
supporting
scholarly robes
covering
nothing

I study the
pontifications of crows
trace the She-Wolf
familiar stranger
hairy beast from
Black Forest fairy tales—

Discover
northern lights
in the stippled tongue of a
bearded iris

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about the author:

Born in Germany at the end of World War II, Eva-Maria Sher started writing poetry as soon as she learned to spell. After emigrating to the United States at seventeen, studying literature and expressive arts, teaching, marrying and raising a family, she picked up where she left off forty years earlier, writing not without humor about everyday life in her adopted country, her memories, her garden, her animals, her relationships, and about growing old in a fast-paced world that seems to allow little time for contemplation.