Lynn Veach Sadler

Former college president Dr. Lynn Veach Sadler has published widely in academics and
creative writing.  Editor, poet, fiction/creative nonfiction writer, and playwright, she has
a full-length poetry collection forthcoming from RockWay Press.  One story appears in
Del Sol’s Best of 2004 Butler Prize Anthology; another won the 2006 Abroad Writers
Contest/Fellowship.  She won The Pittsburgh Quarterly’s 2001 Hay Prize; tied for first in
Kalliope’s 2002 Elkind Contest; was a runner-up for the 2002 Spoon River Poetry Review
Editors’ Prize Contest; and won the Poetry Society of America’s 2003 Hemley Award and
Asphodel’s 2003 Poetry Contest.  She was published (2002) in Pudding House’s
(invitational) National Archiving Project, Poets’ Greatest Hits; the chapbook, Poet
Geography, won the Lee Witte Poetry Contest and was published in the Mount Olive
College Poetry Series (2003); To “Talk in That Book” of Nature received the (2005)
Charles Dickson Chapbook Prize of the Georgia Poetry Society and was published in
2006; and the chapbook, America, won Honorable Mention in the 2006 Poets Corner
Press Competition and was published in 2006.  








Mermaid on the Sand



Mr. Willard I. Babb,

deceased at eighty-one,

“Formerly of” Portsmouth Island

but inhabiting Virginia

at the time of his (nominal) demise.  



Nominally, Portsmouth Island died a

long time back.  Though a harbor

for ocean-going ships drawing

too much water for sounds and rivers,

it allowed the unloading of their ladings

into shallow-drafting vessels.  



Nominally unpeopled, Portsmouth Island

owns coast guard station, tiny air strip,

a few barren homes with cisterns

to collect rain water for drinking,

a church with a guest register

(Who is the Host?),

the Park Service to maintain it

(Who is the Host?),

a ghost town thriving,

empty rooms painted.



Willfully, Portsmouth Island’s harbor filled,

inlet closed, but it had

gathered up other counties’ parts

long before consuming Mr. Babb,

had set a contemporary movie

(Though good, it was still a movie.),

is its own best fog machine.



Mr. Babb calls Portsmouth Island

from the deep,

me as Desdemona.

I see its mosquitoes suck

blood from turnips of air.

I hear them frustrated, angry,

eschew their eating me.

Mr. Willard I. Babb is the

Host they cannot devour,

not to save their flying souls.  



Mr. Willard I. Babb

trumpeted his former home

as I trumpet his next for him.



Mr. Willard I. Babb,

I salute you for saluting

Portsmouth Island beyond

your very last breath of life.

You needed not

the merchant’s powders,

rose like a wave from the deep

to catch Portsmouth Island to you

as if Leviathan danced upon your hook.  

You and Portsmouth Island are not nominal

by any ghost-riding,

terminal ghost-writing,

whale the deep as I wail it.



You found purchase beyond

face and market value,

have left me pining

for a man I have never known,

an island I have never seen—

a mermaid on the sand.





Wild Thyme



Mountain Father stalks into the cabin,

trees the air for musk, for funk—

not mother’s—daughter’s.

Athwart . . . .  

Thwarted.

Mountain Father noses, knows:

in the woods where

she’s lain with Him,

Love’s smell yields

to wild thyme.



Mountain Father sics

dog on daughter

to be sure she’s not been

licked by Sin.

Oh, let her not be licked by Sin!

She cannot hide from the

dog’s go-sic.

She cannot hide from

this old dog’s go-sic.

She cannot hide from

God’s Go-Sic.

The dog returneth to his

vomit for its smell.

The dog licks the

blood of Naboth

for the smell of its taint.

The dog licks the blood

of Jezebel

for the smell of its taint.

Dogs nose women,

know them monthly,

know them, loving,

in-between.

Only the dog can say.

Only the dog knows

the master,

what trees the master.





The Yankee Way



They kept saying,

everywhere in Chile,

“You will see ‘The Yankee Way.’”

Yes, I was embarrassed.

Even the Conquistadors

are Yankees?

What could we Yanks have done in Chile?

(Hey now, I’m a Reb anyway.)

I hate being a “Yank” “over there.”

Let’s all forget

“Ugly Americans”!  O.K.?



Arica, Iquique, Antofagasta,

Coquimbo, Viña del Mar,

Valparaíso, Santiago,

Puerto Montt—everywhere and every day:

“The Yankee Way.”



At length, we’d done the length of Chile.

Were they calling it “The Yankee Way”?

I was again at ease and then—



and then we went part-way-round

Lago Llanquihue.  I see it spelled.

Lake “Yankeeway’s” an inland sea

lying among volcanoes!

Llanquihue is only

South America’s

third largest lake!



Arraign this Southern Yankee

in Punta Arenas, one of the world’s

most southern cities!

I plead guilty as charged

to “the Yankee way.”

Lynn Veach Sadler