Sarah Hart

Sarah Hart has lived in Estill County, KY, for 6 years, having retired from her careers with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard.  In retirement, she resumed an interest in English as a Second Language (ESL), completed an ESL certification program at EKU, and tutors foreign students and their families in English language-learning skills.
  
She finds it rewarding to use components of “The Writing Workshop” approach to writing as a means for her ESL students to find their voice in their second language.  Sarah, her husband, 2 rescue dogs, a shaggy-young donkey, and a couple dozen cows live on about 300 acres in the Daniel Boone National Forest along the slow-moving Kentucky River.  She finds daily inspiration for her writing by “reading the world” right outside her back door.

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The Felled Trees

 
Their crowns of twigs and branches lay defeated, sprawled across the ground.

Broken pieces lying all around.

Once a study in rigidity and stability--

So majestic and tall.

What cries were made during their fall?



No longer specimens of mechanical strength; lying horizontal

After having succumbed to strategically placed pulls.

Their boles cut in many pieces, exposing cyclical phenomena

And secrets of the past.

Did the sight leave anyone aghast?



Hardy limbs with large, green Winter buds -- as plump as Chinese gooseberries -- 

And massive Sycamore trees with their mottled exfoliating bark

Are fading memories.

Now Spring brings alive the greening undergrowth

To cover their decaying remains and provide habitat for new life.

But does it really hide the sins of the “master logger?”



Sarah Hart
May 6, 2013

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The Awakening


I was awakened from a quiet sleep by noises coming from my own body.  Wheezing, gurgling, coughing sounds disturbed the darkened room.  In a slightly dreamy state, I focused on those sounds--almost like someone who meditates draws all their attention to the rising and falling breath. Unlike a meditative state,
however, there is nothing rhythmical to concentrate on. The wheezing reeks of the dying’s last jagged breaths; the gurgling sounds are far from the cute, cooing, gurgles of a baby; and the coughs just downright hurt, as my chest heaves uncontrollably without any poetic rhythm.  

I sit up from my horizontal position, propping myself into a semi-sitting position with the aid of a foam wedge and various pillows of different sizes and shapes.  The wheezing, gurgling, and coughing seem louder now that I am fully awake. 
Perhaps if I get out of bed, and move about, and become distracted by some household chore that’s calling my name, these annoying bodily sounds will, at least, be muffled by my concentration on an out-of-body experience.


Sarah  Hart
February 2014

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