Sharon Lieberman

Sharon A. Lieberman is a grant writer who has published on women and health in magazines, book reviews, and was health editor of New York City's first feminist newspaper. Studied poetry writing with a minor Beat poet.  Jo-Anne Hirshfield Memorial Poetry awardee in 2016, Adult Third Place, and 2017 Adult Honorable Mention.

Flight

The careener, hovering

darting for a lift

Of fine bones by a breeze

to catch the drift

Making sketchy feathered patterns

out of the sky

     hear the flap flap glide

       of the things that fly

Small Summer Lake

Beneath the dome of dawn

nature’s own whisper chamber

across the lake, the liquid lap of the angler’s oar 

a reel zips, a shout, the thrill of the catch

Nasturtiums swelling against the morning

crowd the wooden dock 

the children chum the water 

with cereal circles

We jump in, shatter the lake surface,

bone-shocked

by meltwater

from another season

The sun’s bright circle rolls over us like a hand lens 

we speak in the cadence of hovering bees

alighting, lingering, 

moving swiftly on to silence

Signs

Slow down, 

at these fifty feet of asphalt

on the red clay hundred-mile coastal road 

banded like a coral snake, black and red

Slow down,

at the small-bosomed speed bump

precisely perpendicular 

to the front door of Hattieville’s Police Station

600 inches of bitumen hailed with a sign:

“Compliments of Ralph. He is Working for Us”

to spare the six families of Hattieville 

clouds of ochre dust churned up

by the coastal route bus

twelve times a day

coming and going 

now here, slowing