Sasha has published poetry in radio and in print.

Two examples follow.

Lightning

If lightning strikes me, with firework shock,
If cat attacks, or snake entwines
and wrenches from me life which was so fragile,
Pity me not,

If alligator snaps shut my short and cumbersome existence,
Or some stereotypical shark enshrines my head
in a cartilage cage,
or barracuda,
(I heard a story once);
beckons me over the edge into a watery grave,
then never mind.

If falling rock, or elephant,
stops me in my tracks,
in my brief parting moments taking stock, I will not say
it is a bad way to go,

If some mad dog which I think it cute and pertinent to touch and try to tame
terminates my sojourn here, or tarantula tramples my neurones,
with a clever venom invented for a mouse,
then let the creature be.

For I, in sickness and in health,
have married myself, without asking permission,
to this world
where trees fall in hurricanes and oceans brew and
lions are meant to take their daily prey,

Then pray not for me, and saviour from these beasts,
but rather, for a glimpse of them, one day, for us all,
And if in glimpsing of the pupils glinting
I end up limping, or worse
Then say it was a privilege to die so.

5 November 1997
Alcala, Andalucia, Spain
Sasha Norris

An evolutionary prayer on marriage

May you be as warm together as the Mediterranean sea,
may your lives be as fruitful as plum trees,
as perfect as a rose,
as bright and jewelled as a peacocks’ train, and as rich,
your defences as prickly as chestnuts.
May you cling to eachother like the ivy to the tree,
have the horizons of a wild mustang,
and cross them as effortlessly.
As each year goes by,
may your roots become more solid
and your leaves more effusive.
We wish you honey on your knife and,
squirrel-hide for your bed,
strawberry conversations and buttercup dispositions.
May you be as good to your family,
as the tree frog which climbs to the top,
of the canopy to place each egg,
in the scented centre of a bromeliad,
or the loving mother octopus,
swirling the water over her treasury of young.
May they repay you with the loyalty of an elephant herd.
May you be in courtship as beautiful and as meticulous as lovebirds,
and in parenthood like a seahorse,
who bears his cherished brood over the hazardous reef,
till they swim into the current of their own accord.
May you have the harmony and communion of two carolling nightingales.
May your arguments be as hot and as short as forest fires,
which burn the seeds to make them grow.
May your love have the peace of geese on a millpond,
the depth of a perch,
the synergy of a bee’s nest,
the humour of a kookaburra,
the resilience of a snail or a worm in a drought,
curled tight in the soil,
the ability to sit it out,
like a deer in the rain,
the sticking power of a teasle.

In short, may the whole world be with you.

Sasha Norris
14 June 1998