Questions for a Traveler

There is a plain, wooden door,
a name carved deeply into it.

The name is yours
but it is not what you call yourself.

It is a curious language,
familiar to tongue but not to mind.

Did you find it as you hiked a forest trail,
life greening in early summer?

Was there a song in the back of your throat
as you climbed up the hillside,

a flush of sunlight washing through your eyes,
the entry in front of you?

Would you simply open it,
or knock first, standing

in the middle of everything, of nothing,
wind whispering high in the leaves?

Open.  Your breath will catch
in a light you never imagined,

like walking inside the daytime sky,
stars scattered inside you.

Paula Sayword’s voice is a voice of quiet beauty. In What Sleeps Inside, Sayword deftly illuminates places of loss as well as places of tremendous beauty and hope. From the beaches outside New Haven to the landscape of the Southwest and the hilltops of New England, these poems are the poems of someone who has long been paying full attention. There’s wisdom in these pages, quiet, meticulous, reverent observations of place. This is a beautiful collection of poems!  Sensual, redemptive, sorrowful, wise, and full of magic.

Carol Potter, author of four collections, the most recent, Otherwise Obedient, and Short History of Pets which won the Cleveland State Poetry Center Award for 2002, and the Balcones Award for Poetry. 

What Sleeps Inside takes the reader on a journey through a lifetime; through time and space, through past and present. Tapping into primal, shared realities, these poems are full of life, full of feeling, rich in imagery and potent in their invitation. The invitation to each of us, as readers, is to take a look at what sleeps inside.

Dorothy Firman, Ed.D, co-author:  Daughters and Mothers: Making it Work and Brace for Impact: Miracle on the Hudson Survivors Share their Stories of Near Death and Hope for New Life.