January 2017
Joyce S. Brown
jsbrown1939@gmail.com
I’m a retired English teacher (high school and college) with 53 years of marriage, two children, four grandchildren, one dog. I’ve had poems in Poetry, The American Scholar, The Tennessee Review, Yankee, and others! 


Present Tense
               
​               Oh Sumptuous moment
               Slower go
               That I may gloat on thee — 
                                            -Emily Dickinson

Kudos to the Buddhists
who train themselves
to live in the Now.

My Now 
is no place of quiet, 
but a Pandemonium 
full of devils 
deviling me
with my
inadequacies. 

What have I 
forgotten, and what 
should I do next?

The brain rocks as if
concussed. There must
be a way for me to rise
from the lake of fire,
and find a monastery
in the mind, or at least
a “sumptuous moment” 
on which to gloat.
©2016 Joyce S. Brown
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