Michael T. Young Verse-Virtual 2016 August

August 2016

I studied and practiced martial arts almost fanatically when I was a teenager but injured my back when I was fifteen. I started writing poetry and by the time my back healed, I decided to be a poet rather than the next Bruce Lee. Since then I’ve published four collections of poetry and received recognitions such as a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. You can keep up with my work at www.michaeltyoung.com.

Ransom Note

Afternoon in late August. You see it on everyone’s face:
in the park they’re all thinking of summer’s end,
the warm flesh and greens that follow its tunnels
down into the cozy murk, how the fountain spray
pushes back at the sky, sunlight inches southward,
and even finches thread the air as if to catch something,
to cage it, like me, knowing that for all the mystical courage
of remaining silent, I have no nerve for it. Even now,
where I sit on the bench, shade slips over me like a hood,
and I’m whisked off, abducted by the day’s closing minions,
the cool, the unwinding, and then a rising in the gorge
to shout my existence back against the burning gyrations,
repetitions I struggle to evade by sitting here in the park
puzzling over this stooped woman and young girl
ferreting through the garbage for discarded cans and bottles,
evidence, even when damaged, that something got away.

Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF