A True Story

Childhood epiphany:

how a magnifying glass

angled toward the sun

smokes a hole in a dry leaf.

I showed Caren – for

the sake of epiphany –

she needed one, or

two, or three – Caren

was the grade school terror.

She came to grief

at recess behind the trailer

(a shuttered mystery),

squatting in dead sedge grass,

with a fascinated enlistee,

lasering a leaf, utterly

enraptured.  Flame, even!

© Monica Adams, 2021

Photo from Outdoor Life
https://www.outdoorlife.com/how-to-easily-start-an-optical-fire-with-these-three-tricks/

Send-Off

Your old mutt snorts and sniffs, leans

his red hide against my solidness, 

knows the smell of motor oil, Old Spice, and cigarettes has gone. 

Relaxes into the silence of your missing stride beside him,

as I carry the gritty sand of you in a rusty cookie tin. 

Amen, I say and spread you

over the ancient, ornery land you loved. 

Our November Valley wind attends your send off, 

gently lifts you from the granite ground.

Like fog or snow or horses’ breath

you linger In the air;

the seen and unseen, 

the here and there, 

the living and dead

quarrel like siblings 

slinging halfhearted punches. 

The crows you named and tried to catch

honor your changing form, 

eulogize your soul beyond the sentinel hills, 

laugh at the late fall gusts that carry you

carry you

© Michelle Stoll, 2021 

Image from Wikimedia Commons

COVID-19

   For all my friends

I talk to myself so I can hear my voice say beautiful things…

Put me in the garden, under the peony bush

and leave me there until I am drunk on perfume.

Put me under the wren’s nest 

so I can hear the babies calling for food.

Put me in the center of the world so when I  shout, 

everyone will hear me

LOVE!

and that velvet word will echo and echo.

My blood is running too fast for my heart. Everyone, 

stop and feel your own, feel your own blood racing.

Put me in the center of the world and I will shout,

TOUCH YOUR NEIGHBOR’S HEART!

  TOUCH IT! TOUCH IT! TOUCH IT!

© Evie Safran, 2021

The President of the Principality of Asturias, Adrián Barbón,
kneels before a memorial in memory of the victims
of the coronavirus ~ from Wikimedia Commons