Miriam Sagan's "Walking the Labyrinth Barefoot"

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Miriam Sagan is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and memoir. Her most recent include Bluebeard's Castle (Red Mountain, 2019) and A Hundred Cups of Coffee (Tres Chicas, 2019). She is a two-time winner of the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards as well as a recipient of the City of Santa Fe Mayor's Award for Excellence in the Arts and a New Mexico Literary Arts Gratitude Award. She has been a writer in residence in four national parks, Yaddo, MacDowell, Gullkistan in Iceland, Kura Studio in Japan, and a dozen more remote and interesting places. She works with text and sculptural installation as part of the creative team Maternal Mitochondria in venues ranging from RV Parks to galleries. She founded and directed the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College until her retirement. Her poetry was set to music for the Santa Fe Women's Chorus, incised on stoneware for a haiku pathway, and projected as video inside an abandoned grain silo in rural Itoshima. Her blog is Miriam's Well--http://miriamswell.wordpress.com




walking the labyrinth barefoot

only one way in

and one way out


passing my friends

each going

at her own pace


in the city

that is mine

outside the cathedral


that is not mine

looking up

I see tourists


snapping photos of us

we must look

like serious penitents


heading for

Jerusalem

in the center


things seem

to speed up

closer to the end


two plump young girls

have appeared

on the cathedral steps


in elaborate

purple gauze gowns

on a Monday morning


for no apparent reason

and the Rose of Sharon tree

sheds it white and blood red blossoms


petals falling

on an empty pair of

someone’s discarded sandals


© 2022 Miriam Sagan

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