Zoom

 Zoom Zoom Zoom… running on the technology highway 

Email and text may soon be outdated 

To computers and iPhones we are now mated 

Snapchat and facetime may be fast, facebook will be a thing of the past 

Zoom Zoom Zoom…running on the technology highway 

To know what’s new just google this, google that

Find old friends and write notes in the chat

No more books; just read on-line; worry not, your eyes will be fine

Zoom Zoom Zoom… running on the technology highway 

Meetings in isolation, but you’re not alone 

Connect with co-workers, working from home 

Learn about COVID, get all the stats and know all the facts 

Zoom Zoom Zoom… running on the technology highway 

Order all your groceries and other supplies 

Fix your virtual background to “travel” world-wide 

Get a spot while they last; view a webinar, take a class

Zoom Zoom Zoom…running on the technology highway 

Attend a church service with music complete 

File your taxes and keep things neat 

Share ideas in a break-out group, please remember to unmute

Zoom Zoom Zoom… running on the technology highway 

Oh the wonders of what we now can do 

And for the children this is normal too 

Sign up for a test, sign up for a shot 

LIFE NOW ON ZOOM 

Like it or NOT

Zoooom………

© Anne Cressin, 2021

Below: Ruben Gallego on Zoom meeting with

constituents from Glendale AZ

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Under a Mopane Tree in the Heat of the Day

A lioness stretches out long, eyes closed, still 

but for the in and out of breathing.  Four flawless

cubs sprawl over her belly, press into her breasts. 

They nurse and knead with baby paws.  She turns 

her body, raises one tawny leg, and the cubs 

topple, mew like miniature bells, scramble, 

search, reconnect – joined-again magnets.  

 

We sit silent on the savanna.  Our unmoving 

roofless vehicle six yards from this august 

animal, predatory carnivore, mother of 

nurslings.   In this moment I sense the kinship – 

a summoned tingle deep in my breast, soft buzz 

echo in the belly that announced the flow of milk.  

She knows that too – nuzzling mouths latched on, 

sucking with fury, and that fleeting serenity, 

mine too.  Her ears are never stopped. 

She hears stalks of grass, their snapping. 

© Martha E. Snell, 2021 

Lioness with cubs, Ngorongoro Crater, The Serengeti
Photo by Tony Young
from Wikimedia Commons

On the Move

Bursts of hail and heavy downpours,

resolute, gray, and dismal rain.

Shaggy pine trees overshadow guard rails.

I stumble on the road to nowhere

jammed with angry, hungry folks

seeking shelter from sheer boredom,

humming uplifting folk songs,

shoplifting a bit of happiness 

from the shelves of the rural stores.

Silver lettering reads LOVE

on the roof of a tumbledown house.

My world trembles around me,

I page through the fluffy ball of memories,

I invested too much in the writing to stop now.

Lonely and forsaken, 

I move from the floor to the sofa

swallowing salted sorrow,

typing the phone number,

a collection of digits.

It’s assigned a new area code since I lived there,

but those seven numbers, 

they are still the same,

exactly the same.

Such pain every time

to touch the buttons, 

listen to a pregnant pause,

hit the nail in the coffin of love,

destroying the sandcastle 

populated with crocodiles and cactuses

with the authority of a weathered writer.

Hitting the nail on my head,

deleting the dead seven numbers.

© Helen Kanevsky, 2018

AT&T Push-button telephone
from Wikipedia

Roses to the Poets

Roses to the poets who might have been, but for …

the paralysis of pain

the security of consent

the ease of silence

Roses for the stillborn words

© William Vollrath, 2020 

"Gladioli and Roses"
by Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904)
Guildhall Art Gallery
from Wikimedia Commons

I did not know / old childhood friend

I did not know 

I had a child to protect

I did not know 

she was used to neglect 

I did not know 

how to feed her 

what she liked to wear

how to hold or care 

for her skin and hair 

I did not know 

how to protect her 

because I did not have 

the strength to fail

until one cold and stormy evening

I heard a ring

and there at my door step 

was a wet 

familiar little girl 

yellow blanket and grey bear 

in her tiny hand 

a warm forgiving look 

in her hazel eyes 

it was then I realized 

that I did not recognize 

her needs as mine 

I had refused to listen 

to her inherent wisdom 

for years 

I could no longer hear 

her pleading for my presence:

my protection 

but then

last december

in the pouring rain 

there she was 

open arms

no raincoat on

welcoming my grief 

like an old childhood friend 

where she asked again 

and this time 

I listened

and instantly 

without judgement 

she offered the kind 

of kindness loss needs: 

a hand to hold

an eternal

internal hug 

standing in the rain

crying like the rain 

around us 

she showed me 

how to take off my armor: 

the denial I wore 

since before 

I can remember 

I told her 

“it hurts, this letting go. 

I do not know 

my life without it.”

she said “it was never yours 

in the first place.”

and once free from its weight

she said softly 

“sometimes holding heaviness 

is a way of trying to forget.”

like I said

I did not know

I had a child to protect 

I did not know 

that this abandoned child 

standing in the rain

was me

© Jona Noelle Baily, 2021

Photo by Zurna Creative on Unsplash 

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     

Songwriter’s Lament

The least of me is always on the outside.

My dull side always faces to the sun.

The finest thoughts are hidden in the shadow,

the tenderest moments somehow never sung.

Try as I may to face and force the issue

and show the world the contours of my mind,

the subtleties are faded in translation.

The meanings are misplaced by word and rhyme.

Maybe in our unheard conversations

we’ve found the answer we sought all along.

The price to pay for being fully human

is that we’ll never write the perfect song.

I guess it shows.

© George Phillips, 1973

Famous American Songs
by Gustav Koppé
in Cornell University Library
from Wikimedia Commons

A Christmas Poem

Take me, take me, home,

Wherever home may be,

Oh, take me.

Or toss me, toss me,

in the deep blue sea.

Just toss me.

Could I stand upon a mountain?

Could I look for the end of the sky?

Could I find the safest place

that could ever be?

I've been upon a mountain.

I've looked for the end of the sky.

I've seen that one safest place,

hold no poetry.

Let me, let me, tug

the string between you and me.

Yes, tug too,

so we know, we know,

the connection;

I am you as you are me.  

© Dennis Wright, 2020

A Christmas themed painting depicting
Peanuts character Snoopy and Woodstock on a window.
Photo by Noah Wulf
from Wikimedia Commons

               Book cover photo from Wikimedia Commons

The Empty Page

This time of year perhaps the empty page

Should be black instead of white

Bleak and wet and heavy with hibernation

Lie weighty and soggy on the silent desk

Waiting for some harbinger some hope

To leaven the wintry landscape within

Perhaps the page were better made of ice

That I may strap on the old hockey skates

Once more and finding that perfect stretch

Of cold weather without snow strike off

Across the perfect surface taking flight

Without a single word to shatter the ecstasy

© Bill Prindle, 2017

Optomotor

I’m watching a creature who watches a screen

a watchman who watches and knows what he’ll mean

when they ask and he tells, and he tells and they ask

about purpose that’s pickled in each daily task

And the music of quicksand like metal will melt

when the crucibles bellow the furies they felt 

They say it’s for knowledge, but knowing is cheap

I can know the whole world if I get enough sleep

A moron can learn all past works of the dead

and still in the present have shit in his head

To understand anything is to understand less

so damn all deductions and let’s make a guess

or profess our stupidity, straight and sincere

find clarity clearly in all that’s unclear

So, do I believe this? Eh, I don’t know

It could be that today is especially slow

I oft throw off caution and except what I mean

when I’m watching a creature who’s watching a screen

© James Cole, 2019

The Gloves

I am a frustrated compulsive shopper.

Without regard for the announced Christmas sale,

I buy a pile of colorful gloves to soothe myself.

Gray woolen gloves,

blue dress gloves,

green leather gloves,

red rubber gloves,

clear surgical gloves,

white wedding gloves,

and a couple of mittens.

I lost my gray gloves in my American history class, 

when I grasped that Cherokee has not always been a brand name,

but women and children sent away in winter with their bare hands.

I lost my blue dress gloves when my boyfriend married my best friend.

They honeymooned in Paris and adopted an abandoned child.

I lost my green leather gloves in a hospice

where my dying father told me that he didn’t love me.

I lost my red rubber gloves in my new boyfriend’s kitchen

when it became clear that he treasured me as a cook.

I lost my clear surgical gloves in the operating room 

when I decided to stop hurting dogs.

I kept my white wedding gloves 

because my granddaughter loves to play with them,

and I gave her the mittens to keep her hands warm

because this is the only thing 

I can do to make her happy on this cold day.

© Helen Kanevsky, 2018

ANTORINI luxury gloves,
from Wikimedia Commons

St. Agatha Waits for Peter

The National Gallery, Edinburgh, 2015

It’s true. I did not need 

them, the mounds of flesh 

where my children should have 

fed, their milkteeth nibbling 

cracked skin, suckling little drops of 

blood with every gulp of milk. 

Still, as I lie bleeding, 

my breasts carried away in a bowl 

(perhaps given to a hungry dog)

I want them back. I send a prayer 

like a stumbling child to heaven. 

I wait in the blooming red.

           ©️  Ellie White, 2016

(First published by |tap| magazine, 2016)

The martyrdom of St. Agatha
by a follower of C. Welcome
from Wikimedia Commons