Edward Ahern Verse-Virtual 2017 May

May 2017

I resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. I have my original wife, but after forty nine years we are both out of warranty. There've been around a hundred fifty poems and stories published so far, and three books. I work the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories on the review board and managing a posse of five review readers.

The Snowstorm

The wind shoves the flakes downward,
a falling, frozen cloud that seals
the man-made lawns and walks
beneath howling, formless anarchy.

The road unplowed, the car buried,
poor-me chatter bouncing across the screen.
There is little that would induce me
to burrow out and slew my way from home.

Loss of power, truly close friend, hunger.
My world, after all, is small.

The Sparrow Nest

The egg-fat sparrow
squats in the gutter-end
under my eave.
Brown and dirty beige,
soft chirping and stoic.

The gutter's held nests
for fourteen years
and sparrows live but five.
A granddaughter stares back,
wondering why my hatchlings
never returned to brood.

I refuse to yank the nests
or tack on mesh
despite communion wafer guano.
We're in residence.
the egg-fat bird and I.

Leaf Fall

On still days past a frost
leaves drop in dainty swirls,
curled in fatal fetal posture
and clothed in stripper’s dress.
Each alone in silent parting
ignores its dormant parent
and the fall of brethren.
in post mortem passage
without burial.

The Storm Wind

gusts and surges
like an unchained guard dog,
strewing dust and pollen,
flashing the naked underside
of leaves,
and tossing meadow grass
like ruffled bear fur,
spinning from side to side
in drunken dance,
a rioting brawl that cannot last,
and ends
with a watery flourish of thunder.

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