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[with 3 poems by Sarah Small]
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Dad, Peeling Apples
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++++++ The color of wheat
bread speckled
like the skin of a Golden Delicious,
freckles on top of freckles
and tiny nicks
from his knife, dots of blood
turned to brown scabs.
My father’s hands
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have never changed. Every night
a different apple
skinned naked,
split and seeded without him
ever looking down, loving the fit
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of apple
in the left hand, brown-handled
knife in the right.
He licks the tip of his finger
where the juice runs clear
and skewers a slice
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for me, which I take
regardless
of whether I want
an apple or whether
the flesh has begun to brown
around the edges.
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When he is done,
knife set down and fingers wiped
clean against the legs
of his beige corduroys, I will take
the leathered back
of his hand to my cheek
and hold it there, begging
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his weathered roots to spread
their soil-caked fingers
long and strong
as deep as the generations will go.
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Sarah Cummins Small
from Stitches, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, Kentucky. © 2025
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Last week I was out on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail with Bob and Steve digging ditches. “Erosion mitigation features” – yeah, ditches. Along one stretch we kept turning up huge earthworms, dozens of them, fat and long as little snakes. As we rescued each one and chucked him/her off the trail, Bob turned to me, local naturalist, and asked, “Say Bill, can you tell which is male and which is female?” Smirk on, Bob. If I recall correctly from Mrs. Schilling’s high school biology, every worm is both. One end is boy and the other end is girl, hermaphrodites. When they want to make little wormlets, they line up parallel head to tail and exchange genetic material. Slimy but exciting!
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Thank you Hermes, Aphrodite, and Mrs. Schilling, whose motto was, “There’s no place in the world for weak women!” Everybody, now, hands on! as we dissected our earthworm. And each 9-week term Mrs. Schilling also sent us out collecting: leaves, insects, fungi. In mid-winter Ohio it was bare bud identification time, each labeled per Linnaeus. I’ve never forgotten Acer rubrum and Quercus alba. My lab partner Dave tried to foist off the bare tip of his defunct Christmas tree as one of his collected buds. Just before he turned his project in, I replaced its label (Pinus pinus?) with Gluteus maxiumus. It was exactly five minutes before Mrs. Schilling’s menacing contralto penetrated to our back row table: “Mr. Mason, come forward!”
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Mrs. Schilling was one of my three most memorable teachers (Mr. Geigel, English, and Herr Watt, German, the other two). I am still in love with Latin binomials and squishy things thanks to her. Mrs. Schilling would certainly never shrink from describing in the most squirm-inducing detail the reproductive habits of earthworms. And at age 15 who is not obsessed with sex in all its varieties, manifestations, and practices? I can’t in all honesty confess that the mystery has even now been fully dispelled, although I think I may have finally figured out the convoluted sex life of ferns. (Listen up, y’all, that’s pronounced Thallus.)
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When I was 12, Dad never sat me down for THE TALK. He just handed me a slim pamphlet, mysteriously titled Where You Came From, then sent me off to read it somewhere my little brother couldn’t peep. “When you’re finished, let me know if you have any questions.” I returned it to him later with the 1965 equivalent of “All good,” but for at least the next two years I still confused female anatomy with British monarchy (Elizabeth Regina). And now I’m supposed to be the one to sit Dad down at 98 and explain to him the facts of why he can’t be asking his physical therapist out on a date? I think I’d rather just stick with the earthworms.
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War
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++++++ Our mother is beautiful
Without makeup, with the round balls
Of her cheekbones like crabapples
Or plums, and her crooked front
Tooth. But with a little
Pencil to shade in the sharp arch
Of eyebrows and bright red lipstick, she becomes
A black-and-white
Photograph hung in a young man’s barracks
Where in the early evening before dark
And after a green supper, one soldier lies
Sideways on his cot facing her,
Tracing the soft outline of her cheek
With one knuckle, three fingers from his lips
To hers and back. We will never be
So carefully memorized.
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Sarah Cummins Small
from Stitches, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, Kentucky. © 2025
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We will never be / so carefully memorized – Sarah Small begins her collection Stitches with a portrait of her parents in the 1940’s, deeply imagined, drawn deep from her heart. Poem by poem she pieces a quilt of memory and legacy, reverence and longing. This is one poetry collection that left me wanting more when I had turned the final page. Its beautiful pattern gradually emerges, on each page so carefully felt and conveyed. The simplest things conceal the greatest mysteries. Within the simplest the greatest is revealed.
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The poet’s eye and ear, her imagery and music, each delicate detail and meticulous observation, all the lives shared, every secret revealed: the colors and textures arrange themselves until we recognize not only the poet’s family but our own place among the tribe of humankind. These are indeed the stitches that gather us into a single human family.
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Stitches is Sarah Cummins Small’s debut collection and is available HERE.
The book’s cover art and design are by Summer Small.
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Unstitched
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I am held together
by tiny stitches
on small scraps of feed sack,
snatches of wool, snips of gingham.
A patchwork of pastels—
a slipshod collage of cotton.
I’ve been silk, satin, taffeta;
I’ve been flowers, polka-dots, and plaid.
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Thin white thread
++++ ++++ zig-zags
++++ across
++++ ++++ the decades
++++ hemming me in, keeping me
from ripping.
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I’ve been zipped.
++++ Buttoned.
++++ ++++ Unsnapped.
I’ve been bumblebunched, twisted,
and straightened. Held pins in my mouth,
pricked fingers, and calloused
my thimble-less thumbs.
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I am done.
Unravel me now:
Rip out the seams
one by one, untwist strings
and untangle knots. Fold me gently.
What I haven’t finished—
take now.
Begin again.
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Sarah Cummins Small
from Stitches, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, Kentucky. © 2025
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Just a reminder that I m leading a naturalist hike the morning of Friday, September 12, 2025 on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail near Elkin and you are invited. During the month of September we celebrate the birthday of the MST! It’s an easy walk, 2 hours or so, lots of stops to check out flora and fauna. Sign up at:
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And if you can’t come on the Friday, we will probably repeat the hike on Saturday, September 27. Sign up with Elkin Valley Trails Association at Meetup.com to receive notices.
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
Thanks, Mary Alice. Yes, Richard's poetry makes me feel that I live more deeply on earth, with all of us.…